The whole “crime doesn’t pay” adage certainly can take on a literal meeting when it comes to the case of some stolen Michigan Lottery tickets in Detroit this week.
According to reports from both Fox 2 Detroit and MLive, a pair of thieves broke into the City Liquor store in the early-morning hours Wednesday at the intersection of Grand River Avenue and Lahser Road and went straight for the lottery stand.
There’s no report of them being caught yet, but their efforts are already moot, given their attempted score and what was pilfered.
Ceiling break-in for … stolen Michigan Lottery tickets?
Per surveillance video of the scene, a pair of masked and fully-clad people dropped in through the ceiling of the liquor store shortly before 5 a.m. Wednesday. The second robber crashed into one of the service counters upon their entry as the store’s alarm sounded.
The two then made a beeline for the area where Michigan Lottery tickets were located, and they started grabbing as many stolen scratch-offs from the display as they could carry, according to the video footage.
They made a check of empty cash registers and then threw the tickets back up into the ceiling area from whence they first dropped.
Police shared the video of the incident with select local media in hopes of being able to find a lead on the perpetrators. Anyone with knowledge of the crime is encouraged to contact the Detroit Police Department.
Lotto tickets become void once reported stolen
The other sort of “oops, they didn’t think of that” plotline at play in this situation is that the manager of City Liquor called the Michigan Lottery to report the stolen tickets, according to the media reports. The lottery keeps track of inventory sent to each of its licensed locations, and so that stock of tickets is now void.
Thus, the tickets they took are just pieces of paper now, unless they were some of the fastest-scratching actors in the Upper Midwest.
The unfortunate thing for some regular lottery players, as well, is one doesn’t know if any of those tickets on the scratch-off display could have been a massive winner. The Michigan Lottery has seen almost 50 millionaires made in the state this year, with many coming from instant games like these scratch-off tickets.
No matter what occurs in this case, nobody comes out a winner.
