A Florida couple has been arrested for allegedly making a fake lottery ticket in the hopes of being paid out a $1 million prize, according to authorities.
In a police report cited by the Pensacola News Journal, Kia Enders and her boyfriend, Dakota Jones, were behind the alleged fraud that saw two scratch-off tickets spliced together to form a winning ticket.
The tickets were ripped horizontally with the top half of one ticket and the bottom half of the other “carefully pieced together” so it showed it was a $1 million prize winner, the Journal said.
However, when they tried to cash it in, lottery officials weren’t fooled, as they checked the serial number and, instead of one, found two.
The Journal shared that the couple submitted their ticket in March to the Florida Lottery, and when they went to check about their winnings days later, they were handed a pair of handcuffs instead of a big check.
During questioning, Enders allegedly claimed the ticket fell out of her car and had been rained on, adding that she played it before it dried, causing it to rip. It was then that she said she had to tape it together.
The police report cited by the Journal says that when she was told of the mismatching serial numbers, she continued to deny any wrongdoing, arguing that the ticket just wasn’t taped correctly.
When discussing the ticket with the lottery agent, Jones had said the couple found two halves of a wet ticket and decided to tape it together and play.
“Jones stated that once scratched, the ticket said a million dollars, and he was like, ‘No freaking way,’” the report states, according to the Journal. “Jones advised that they did not buy the ticket, and he doesn’t know what Enders told us, but that’s the truth.”
After Jones was told about the mismatching serial numbers, he said his girlfriend knew they didn’t go together.
“I began to state, ‘So she obviously knew …’ and Jones stated, ‘Yeah, she knew, man,’” the agent alleged in the report. “Jones quickly changed what he was saying and stated that when they looked at the ticket, they thought it was legit.”
Escambia County Sheriff Chip Simmons spoke with CBS Florida about the fraudsters, saying that if you “pretend like you’ve won a million dollars, they’re gonna take a look” into the ticket.
“I don’t think this is gonna be a made-for-TV movie type of situation because, uh, it was clear to the lottery officials — and obviously clear to us — that she had taken two tickets with different, you know, one side had one serial number, the other side had the other serial number on it,” Simmons said.
The pair were arrested and charged with forgery/alteration of a lottery ticket with intent to defraud, passing a forged/altered state lottery ticket, and larceny—grand theft of $100,000 or more, according to Fox 35.