A convenience store owner and his daughter have been fined $4.
6 million and jailed for stealing a winning lottery ticket.
68-year-old Jun-Chul Chung from Canada and his 36-year-old daughter Kathleen Chung were sentenced to 7 and 4 years in prison.
Kenneth Chung, Kathleen’s brother, was also given a 10-month sentence.
The real ticket winner received his $12.5 million earnings plus interest.
Winner Daniel Campbell said when the winnings were given: “I’m just really happy.” He split the prize with six of his friends who were also part of the lottery pool.
“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.”
Justice Douglas Gray ordered Jun-Chul Chung and Kathleen Chung to each pay $2.3 million, the amount remaining on the winning ticket after about $8 million of assets were seized by the courts.
The father and daughter used the winnings to purchase luxury cars and mansions.
It was in 2003 when Mr. Campbell got the winning ticket from Variety Plus in Burlington, Ontario. Kenneth Chung was managing the store at that time but it was his father who validated the five free plays they won from a previously bought ticket.
After discovering one of them was a winner, Jun-Chul took the ticket and returned only the four losing tickets to Mr. Campbell.
His daughter Kathleen went to the prize center to cash the ticket.
After a few months, an investigator discovered her brother owned the Variety Plus where the ticket was validated. But the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation paid the ticket out to Chung anyway.
The fraud was then highlighted in a 2007 report on ‘suspicious wins’ in the provincial-run lottery. The report called out the OLG for not doing enough to stop fraud committed by ticket sellers.
Former Ontario’s ombudsman Andre Marin told CBC News: “They had a real policy of coddling up with retailers and retailers exploited that, and many were wily and got away with that.”
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