Thieves break into stores, steal lottery scratchers
Thieves on the Central Coast have recently been targeting stores to steal lottery tickets and scratchers.
It is leaving many businesses shocked at just how many are getting targeted.
The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office says some of these stolen scratchers can still be cashed in, even if thieves only get a few bucks out of it.
The door to Neptune Oil’s convenience store in Monterey is fixed now. But last Friday at midnight, a break in happened.
“I came to the store and I see that the front door is broken and that the police was waiting,” said Ano Meah, the store manager.
Two masked thieves had broken in and taken cash, cigarettes and an entire box of lottery scratchers. The value of the tickets in lottery boxes is about $14,000.
“It’s too scary especially in such a nice city. You never expect that kind of situation,” said Meah.
But burglaries do not just happen at this store. The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office says they are investigating seven different cases of lottery ticket theft, ranging from one to nearly 500 tickets stolen.
“In this kind of scale, this is probably the first one. You know, every once in a while, it’s somebody took my ticket or this,” said Cdr. John Thornburg, a spokesperson for the MCSO. “But somebody breaking into a business and targeting what appears to be… she was going specifically for that plastic container.”
One woman caught on surveillance footage broke into a King City store and also took the whole container of tickets. Investigators believe the same woman then cashed the tickets in Gilroy soon after.
It seems there are multiple suspects doing the same thing, and authorities are not sure if they are related.
Meah says he has heard of at least four other incidents on the peninsula and hopes something will be done.
“We hope our local police agency, they will open their eyes. That they can prevent another incident, you know?” he said.
Meah also says they are planning to install metal bars on the doors and windows of the store to prevent anything like this from happening again.
