Two years ago, an Indian-origin man named Meer Patel found himself at the centre of a huge lottery fraud case in Tennessee after he was accused of trying to claim a $1 million winning scratch card that belonged to someone else.Patel, then 23, was arrested and charged with theft over $250,000 after stealing a winning lottery ticket from a customer at a petrol station where he worked in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.The customer had purchased two Diamond and Gold scratch-off tickets at a Shell petrol station. Instead of scratching the tickets himself, the man only revealed the barcodes and asked Patel to scan them to see whether they were winners. Police said one ticket carried a prize of $40, which Patel paid to the customer. However, the second ticket was worth a $1 million.Patel falsely told the customer the ticket was not a winner and dropped it into a rubbish bin. The customer left the store believing he had no further winnings.What happened next was captured on store surveillance footage.“Store video obtained by Investigators Vic Donoho and Greg Heiman of the Tennessee Lottery showed the clerk allegedly taking out the trash, removing the winning ticket and placing it in his pocket,” the sheriff’s office said.Patel later scratched the front of the ticket to reveal the prize amount and realised he was holding a million-dollar winner.“Mr. Patel is then seen later in the video celebrating in the store after scratching off the front of the ticket and learning it was a $1 million winner,” detective Dennis Ward said.Investigators also reviewed footage that showed Patel scanning the tickets, discarding the winning ticket and later retrieving it after the customer had gone.Police said Patel then travelled to the Tennessee Lottery headquarters in Nashville to claim the prize as his own. Under lottery rules, any prize worth $200,000 or more must be claimed in person at the organisation’s headquarters.However, lottery officials quickly became suspicious.“He went to the Tennessee Lottery Commission to claim the ticket as his own and through their normal line of questioning there were enough red flags for them to say, ‘Hey, you need to get all of your affairs in order and come back to us and we’re gonna hold on to the ticket,’” Lt. Det. Steve Craig told WTVF. That made it “pretty obvious” what Patel had done.The concerns raised by lottery staff triggered an investigation. Tennessee Lottery investigators obtained surveillance footage from the petrol station and shared their findings with law enforcement authorities.Patel was arrested on 22 July, 2024 and charged with theft over $250,000. He was later held on a $100,000 bond at the Rutherford County Adult Detention Center while awaiting a court appearance.Meanwhile, detectives tried to find the customer who had unknowingly walked away from a life-changing jackpot. After reviewing store footage, they were able to track him down and inform him that he was in fact the rightful owner of the winning ticket.“The feel-good side of this story is the (man) never knew he was the winner until we made contact with him,” Craig said. “That is absolutely life-changing money.”According to investigators, the man was shocked and grateful when he learned he had become a millionaire.
