SAN ANTONIO – A San Antonio convenience store owner says his store and others are getting ripped off for their scratch-off lottery tickets.
Thieves took off with a case of lottery tickets from Anwar Tahir’s store on the West Side, the Leal Food Mart, last week. Security video shows a man distracting the employee at the register before tucking a plastic case of scratch-off tickets from the counter under his arm and running away with another man.
Tahir, a board member and past president of the San Antonio-based Association of Convenience Store Retailers, says these thefts are a common problem and provided KSAT with videos from other stores showing similar tactics, plus an apparent break-in.
Tickets reported stolen can be deactivated, which keeps them from being “validated” or cashed in. Still, the thieves have a window of opportunity to look for winning tickets before that happens.
If the thieves successfully find winning tickets and cash them in, Tahir says the store owner can find themself on the hook for thousands of dollars worth of tickets, which can have a face value of up to $100 each.
A Texas Lottery manual warns retailers that “if validations occur on the tickets, you will be responsible for the range of tickets in which the validations occurred.”
Tahir thinks part of the problem is how retailers must activate entire ticket packages before selling them. If retailers were to start the tickets individually, as they’re sold, he said, it would prevent theft.
“Because the rest of the tickets, if they are stolen, the whole dispenser, it’s just a paper for them. So they cannot cash it because it’s not been activated,” Tahir said.
In an emailed response to KSAT’s questions, a Texas Lottery Commission spokeswoman wrote, in part, “Texas Lottery scratch ticket games are assigned to retailers by the pack and not by the individual ticket. This is an industry-standard.”
The spokeswoman said there are no plans at this time to try out individual ticket activation.