A Florida woman faces felony charges after she was accused of taking a Walmart customer’s winning lottery ticket, totaling $2,700, police records show.
Tameka Hall, 40, faces a felony charge of grand theft of property valued between $750 and $5,000, according to an arrest affidavit from the Volusia Sheriff’s Office.
According to the affidavit, a customer — who told police he plays the same lottery numbers every day — went to the Walmart in DeLand on June 14 to cash in a ticket that had won him $2,700.
After she verified the man’s winning ticket, Hall, the cashier at the store, told him that his earnings were too large for her to provide to him on-site, the affidavit said. Instead, it said, she provided him with a receipt with instructions about how to cash in the ticket elsewhere.
But Hall, when she handed the man the instructions, neglected to return the ticket itself, which is required when a lottery ticket is traded in for cash, the affidavit said.
The man later returned to the Walmart to retrieve his missing ticket, but it couldn’t be found.
The store manager, who also spoke to police, said she saw Hall pocket the winning ticket on store security video after she handed the victim the instructions on what to do next, the affidavit said. Hall then left work for the day and never returned the ticket.
When police spoke to Hall the next day, she told officers she had intended to return the ticket to a manager, even though she still had it, according to the affidavit.
She also said she was not aware that the victim would need the physical ticket to obtain his earnings from another location, according to the affidavit. She said she pocketed the ticket only because another customer came up to the lottery counter shortly after the victim left and she wanted to help them out.
Hall claimed, according to the affidavit, that she never intended to deprive the man of his winnings.
She then told officers that she still had the winning ticket and led them to her car to retrieve it, according to the affidavit. It said the ticket was in the front seat, along with personal documents and other receipts.
Police were able to confirm that the ticket Hall returned was the victim’s and later determined that Hall was at fault, the affidavit said. Hall was arrested and booked into the Volusia County Branch Jail.
