Posted on 01/08/2004 10:58:55 AM PST by marshmallow
CLEVELAND - A woman admitted through tears Thursday that she lied about losing the winning ticket for a $162 million lottery prize, saying: "I wanted to win so badly for my kids and my family."
Elecia Battle, 40, is dropping her lawsuit to block payment of the 11-state Mega Millions jackpot to the certified winner, her lawyer Sheldon Starke said.
"I wanted to win," Battle said. "The numbers were so overwhelming. I did buy a ticket and I lost it. I wanted to win so bad for my kids and my family. I apologize."
The Cleveland woman had filed a police report saying she lost the ticket, possibly when she dropped her purse outside a convenience store. The lottery dismissed the claim and declared Rebecca Jemison, 34, the winner on Tuesday.
Police Lt. Kevin Nietert said Thursday he expected Battle to be charged with filing a false police report, a misdemeanor punishable by 30 days to six months in jail.
Battle apologized to her husband, her lawyer and Jemison, saying she wanted to use the money to help her family and recently laid-off Cleveland police officers.
"I'm not a bad person, I'm really not," she said. "Everyone has a past."
Lottery officials said they knew the truth all along.
"The Ohio Lottery from the beginning had all the confidence in the world that Rebecca Jemison had the winning ticket and purchased the winning ticket," spokeswoman Mardele Cohen said.
Jemison had provided another lottery ticket purchased at the same time and location and had a lottery ticket that showed she had played the same numbers in the prior drawing, the lottery said.
Battle's police report said the ticket numbers were related to her family, and police initially said she had a credible story because she knew details such as the approximate time the winning ticket was bought.
Police and court records show Battle has a criminal history.
While working at a Richmond Heights pharmacy in 1999, Battle used a customer's credit card number to make purchases, police said. She paid a $450 fine for misuse of a credit card, and a 10-day jail sentence was suspended.
Battle was convicted in 2000 in Cleveland Heights of assault for grabbing a drug store clerk's hair and scratching her, according to police records. Battle got a six-month suspended sentence.
She was convicted of criminal trespassing in 2002 and paid restitution of about $1,250, according to South Euclid court records. Fines were suspended because she was indigent.
Jemison, a hospital telephone operator who lives in suburban South Euclid, qualified for a lump-sum payment of $67.2 million, after taxes.
Yes, you are now.
Oh, she doesn't spend any money on the lottery. She just claims she does.
Personally, I say they should charge her with the attempted theft of $162 million. And since I am currently dealing with the aftermath of some scumbag stealing my Visa check card and running up hundreds of dollars in charges on it, I'm not that sympathetic to her claim that she's made a few teensy mistakes in her past. A "mistake" is when you put on socks of two different colors. Stealing somebody else's credit card is called a crime. This woman is nothing but a liar, thief and grifter, and she needs to be locked away before she does it again or until she gets the message to stop it.
This woman actually went to the trouble of retaining a lawyer and initiating litigation. That's not a spur of the moment whopper. It's an orchestrated program of fraud.
The real winner must have been on an emotional rollercoaster. Jubilant at her victory one moment, then despairing at having to battle a crook, the next.
Not at all. A lottery ticket is a bearer instrument until it is signed.
The Texas Lottery says it right on the back of the ticket:
"Unsigned tickets could be claimed by whoever possess the ticket."
I presume the Ohio lottery is similar. If so, the attorney should be disciplined by the state bar association for even taking the case.
A lottery ticket is not a check (which is payable to order). It's payable to bearer.
I am not saying she would have a good case, just A case.
The Uniform Commercial Code makes a clear distinction between instruments payable to bearer and payable to order.
Again, the lawyer should be disciplined for wasting the court's time. But, he probably has fewer scruples than his client.
He also probably figured that he would get some publicity out of it, even if he knew his chances of winning were between zero and none.
Frankly, I think they were hoping that the real winner would agree to an out-of-court settlement just to make them go away and shut up.
Nothing, as I remember. When Clinton subsequently contradicted the affidavit, the attorney filed notice with court that the affidavit was false. It was posted here, but I couldn't find it in a quick search.
One can wonder if the attorney always knew it was false, but I guess he covered himself by filing the notice.
I'm not sure about the rest of your questions, but I do remember that the original (fabricated) story was that she dropped her purse when leaving the store, and claimed that the ticket must have fallen out when that happened. So, even if it had really happened as she said, the person who found it couldn't have returned it.
A number of years ago, a convenience store sold a ticket to a customer. There was something wrong with the ticket (the wrong lottery game, or was supposed to be cash value, or something). The store's policy was to hold the ticket either for sale to another customer, and failing that, it was the property of the store owner.
An unsold ticket won the jackpot, and the clerk on duty pocketed the winning ticket. I had to do some searching, and found this:
http://www.newstribune.com/stories/020303/fea_0203030037.asp
The largest jackpot in South Dakota was a controversial $12.4 million Lotto America prize awarded in 1991 to Ionia Klein of Dallas.
Klein, who worked in a Gregory convenience store, first said she bought the ticket before the drawing. She later admitted claiming it the next day after realizing it had the winning numbers.
The ticket was left behind the counter two days earlier by another clerk who had punched it up for a customer who refused to buy it.
Store owners Michael and Diane Dacy and Scott and Julie Anshutz sued Klein for the jackpot. They eventually agreed to split the money; the owners got 58 percent, and Klein received 42 percent.
--- end cite.
This would tend to support your contention, although I think it's a little different, because there was an attempt at deception and I believe she violated a previous agreement about ownership of refused tickets (although the article doesn't mention it). I remember it, because I was living near there at the time.
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