A Canadian convenience store worker and his daughter have been jailed and fined C$4.6m ($3.5m, \u00a32.6m) for stealing a winning lottery ticket.<\/p>\n
Jun-Chul Chung, 68, and his daughter Kathleen Chung, 36, were sentenced to seven and four years in prison.<\/p>\n
Her brother, Kenneth Chung, who ran the convenience store in a Toronto suburb where his father worked, was given a 10-month sentence.<\/p>\n
The real ticket winner eventually got his C$12.5m earnings – plus interest.<\/p>\n
“I’m just really happy,” winner Daniel Campbell said in 2011, when the winnings were restored.<\/p>\n
He split the jackpot with six of his colleagues who were part of a lottery pool.<\/p>\n
“It’s a big deal for myself and my family and I can maybe help them out and take care of them. I’m a little overwhelmed; a lot overwhelmed.”<\/p>\n
Justice Douglas Gray ordered the father and daughter to each pay C$2.3m, the amount remaining on the winning ticket after approximately C$8m of assets were seized by the courts.<\/p>\n
The court found the fraudsters had\u00a0used the winnings to buy a mansions and luxury cars.<\/a><\/p>\n Mr Campbell got the ticket in 2003 from Variety Plus in Burlington, Ontario, after a previously purchased ticket won him five “free plays”.<\/p>\n Kenneth Chung managed the store, but it was his father Jun-Chul Chung who validated the five free plays.<\/p>\n Upon discovering that one of them was the winner, Jun-Chul stole it and returned the four losing tickets to Mr Campbell.<\/p>\n Then his daughter Kathleen Chung cashed the ticket in at the prize centre.<\/p>\n Months later, an investigator for the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation, which runs the province’s lottery, discovered her brother owned the Variety Plus where the ticket was validated.<\/p>\n But the OLG paid the ticket out to Chung anyway.<\/p>\n The “shocking” fraud was highlighted in a 2007 government report on “suspicious wins” in the provincial-run lottery. The report called out the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation for not doing enough to stop fraud perpetuated by lottery ticket sellers.<\/p>\n The government estimates lottery retailers, employees and their families have taken home $198m in prizes over the past 13 years.<\/p>\n “They had a real policy of coddling up with retailers and retailers exploited that, and many were wily and got away with that,”\u00a0former Ontario’s ombudsman Andre Marin told CBC News.<\/a><\/p>\n The gaming corporation has since cracked down on retailer fraud and police have charged a number of winners.<\/p>\n Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What happened?<\/h2>\n