Dakota Jones and Kira Enders have been charged with presenting a forged state lottery ticket, forging a lottery ticket to defraud and grand theft of $100,000 or more (Pictures: Escamba County Jail/Florida Lottery)
A couple are accused of creating a fake $1million lottery ticket to try to cash in on a fortune and were caught red-handed.
Dakota Jones and Kira Enders of DeFuniak Springs, Florida, allegedly forged a state lottery ticket by putting together two pieces of 500X The Cash scratch off tickets to make one that appeared to be a winner.
‘Each of those tickets were ripped horizontally and then carefully pieced together to become one fraudulently altered ticket using the top half of one of the actual tickets and the bottom half of the other,’ stated the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office.
‘That fraudulently altered ticket now visually shows that it is a $1million prize winner.’
Enders is accused of driving to the Florida Lottery’s office in Pensacola on March 1 and submitting an official claim form for a $1million payment.
Six days later, Enders apparently called the lottery to check on the status of their claim and spoke to Special Agent Richard Pisanti, the Pensacola News Journal reported.
Pisanti told Enders to meet him days later to go over paperwork.
When Jones and Enders met with Pisanti on March 11, they were detained immediately and separated pending an investigation.
In her interview, Enders claimed that she scratched the ticket herself and thought it was worth $1million. She added that it would not scan at three stores so she took it to the lottery organization itself.
‘Enders stated that the ticket was in her car and it must have fallen out because when she found it the next day it had gotten rained on,’ stated the sheriff’s office.
‘Enders stated that she tried to scratch the ticket before it was dry and it started falling apart so she taped it so it wouldn’t get more ruined than it already was.’
When Pisanti showed Enders that the words at the back of the combined tickets did not match, she replied, ‘What, they don’t go together?’
Enders also denied taping them together.
Meanwhile, Jones had a different story.
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