UPDATE: A man fitting the description of the suspect of the Wednesday morning video lottery ticket forgery tried the same tactic at the Empire Casino about 2:15 PM Wednesday afternoon. The man did not get away with any cash and police are still looking for the suspect.

Much like retail outlets that need to be on alert against counterfeit bills exchanged for goods, casinos equally need to watch out for forged lottery tickets.

Sioux Falls Police Public Information Officer Sam Clemens says two such instances took place within the last five days.

“Clerks noticed after the fact that the tickets had been altered. Sounds similar in the cases, but one suspect was a man and one was a woman. One of the incidents happened on Saturday, but wasn’t reported until yesterday. They didn’t notice that the ticket was fake.”

There are different methods in forging video lottery tickets, but Clemens outlines two of the most common tricks.

“What they’re doing is adding numbers to the top because most of the time clerks just look at the numbers and not at the words written out down below. Sometimes we’ve seen it in the past where they will take them offsite and then make a photocopy. We’ve even seen it where people will cash out a ticket, go to the bathroom and take a pen and then write a new number on it.”

The incident on Saturday occurred on South Sycamore Avenue involving the woman. Meanwhile the other incident took place early Wednesday morning on West 41st Street where the suspect is described as a black man about 6 feet and 1 inch tall.

Police are still searching for the suspects and are not sure if the two crimes are related.


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