The Florida Lottery has been operating for 36 years and includes more than 85 different games.
Lottery winnings have created 3,800 millionaires in Florida.
But this Florida couple created a fake lottery ticket that won them a trip to the last place they ever expected.
Many Americans dream of buying a winning lottery ticket that changes their lives forever.
Some play games like Mega Millions or PowerBall, where they try and pick the correct combination of numbers to win the jackpot.
Others opt for scratch-off tickets that vary in price and come in several distinctive styles of games.
The Florida Lottery started in 1988 with a single scratch-off game and today includes more than 85 games.
During the Florida Lottery’s operation, more than $89 billion has been awarded to game winners.
The Florida Lottery Scratch-Off games give people the chance to win a prize that ranges from $1 to more than $1 million.
And Florida couple Kira Enders and Dakota Jones recently tried to pull a fast one on lottery officials by claiming to hold a ticket with a $1 million prize.
On March 1, Enders showed up at the Florida Lottery office in Pensacola and submitted an official claim of a $1 million winning prize from a “500X The Cash” scratch-off ticket that she said she purchased in DeFuniak Springs.
But officials quickly noticed the obvious alterations on the ticket.
The couple cut lottery tickets in half and pieced them together with tape to make a winning scratch-off ticket.
“The ticket had obvious alterations and is crudely pieced together from two separate actual scratch-off tickets,” deputies noted in the report.
“Each of those tickets were ripped horizontally and then carefully pieced together to become one fraudulently altered ticket using the top half of one of the actual tickets and the bottom half of the other,” the report continued. “That fraudulently altered ticket now visually shows that it is a one-million-dollar prize winner.”
But there was one major problem aside from the poor tape job on the ticket.
Lottery tickets contain serial numbers.
And apparently the couple forgot to check the serial numbers of the two different scratch-offs that they taped together.
“I don’t think this is gonna be a made-for-TV movie type of situation because, uh, it was clear to the lottery officials — and obviously clear to us — that she had taken two tickets with different, you know, one side had one serial number, the other side had the other serial number on it,” Escambia County Sheriff Chip Simmons said.
The couple drove to meet with a lottery agent several days after submitting the ticket in Pensacola.
But they were greeted by police officers instead of lottery officials.
“The special agent explained that the ticket was fraudulently pieced together, and Enders at first did not remember where she purchased it but said that the ticket had gotten ripped and wet in the rain while trying to scratch it,” Fox35 reported. “She maintained that she was confused about how the two tickets didn’t match even though they were pieced together.”
When asked about the serial numbers, Enders acted confused.
“What, they don’t go together?” she said, before adding that “it is insane” and that it “blows her mind.”
Enders and Jones were arrested and placed in the Escambia County Jail on $20,000 and $17,500 bonds.
DeSantis Daily will keep you up-to-date on any new developments in this ongoing story.
