Circle K manager steals 30 lottery books, cashes ticket worth $1,000, Florida cops say
A woman showed up to a Florida Lottery office to cash in a $1,000 scratch-off ticket and walked away with a check in a seemingly ordinary transaction, Florida authorities said.
Five months later, investigators said they learned the woman had stolen the ticket during her shift as a Circle K store manager.
Now, the 34-year-old has been booked in jail on $3,000 bond with a felony charge of filing a false lottery claim, according to Seminole County court records.
The convenience store employee’s scheme came to light in July 2023 when the company’s accounting division received a charge from the Florida Lottery for $35,971.68 for 30 “missing lottery books,” investigators with the Florida Department of Lottery wrote in a capias request.
Lottery database records showed someone activated a book containing 30 tickets for the Florida 300X The Cash scratch-off game and scanned the whole book in 10 minutes on Feb. 24, 2023, authorities said. The game costs $30 to play and features top prizes of $15 million.
The manager activated 10 other lottery books during her shift that day in Lake County, and one of the tickets she scanned was a $1,000 winner, investigators said.
The woman visited a Florida Lottery office in neighboring Seminole County three days later to claim her prize and signed a form attesting she was the rightful owner of the ticket, according to court documents.
When confronted by her supervisors at Circle K, she admitted she took the 30 books of lottery tickets from February to August 2023, according to authorities.
A warrant was issued in December 2023, and the woman was taken into custody March 20, 2025, Seminole County records show.
The woman worked at the gas station convenience store in Fruitland Park, which is part of the Orlando metropolitan area.
This story was originally published March 21, 2025 at 4:04 PM with the headline "Circle K manager steals 30 lottery books, cashes ticket worth $1,000, Florida cops say."