QR-scan those ‘winning’ tickets, says lottery scam victim
Shopkeepers who cash out winning lottery tickets have been warned about a scammer who fraudulently made off with Bt4,000 in unearned winnings in Samut Prakan on Saturday.
Aree Kitburee, 52, of Phra Pradaeng district said her 77-year-old mother had been in charge of their store when a man in his 50s was paid Bt4,000 for two tickets apparently bearing the winning final two digits in the September 16 lottery draw.
But a QR scan later found that the tickets carried numbers that didn’t match up.
Aree said she usually verifies tickets by wiping across the numbers with a thinner and scanning them with a device that detects the UV watermark. The con-man’s tickets passed that test.
The same man returned on Sunday evening and tried to pull the scam with two more “winning” tickets from the same lottery draw. This time Aree used a QR scanner to double check and spotted the non-matching numbers.
She threw him out – an act caught on video – but thought nothing more about it until her mother told her she’d paid him Bt4,000 on Saturday.
Aree lodged a police complaint Sunday evening, turning over the tickets and video of her evicting
the man from her shop.
She urged other retailers who cash out lottery tickets to make sure they scan the QR code as well as doing other verification tests.
