Legal Question in Criminal Law in California

Is this Criminal?

My Bother in law owned and operated Gas station. For a long time he had lottery gambling problem and he was licensed to sell Lottery at his gas station. What ever he won he always put it back and lot more. For some reason that we don�t knot other than he had break down he printed huge numbers of lottery at his gas station and he never checked them and never cashed them. The lottery suspended his license and he entered agreement to make monthly payment. At the mean time he decided to get out of the gas station and the new owners and he paid the balance in full, but while this process was going the lottery charged him larceny felony. My question is. Is this criminal offense since he never intended to steal anything and the lottery tickets that he printed are not worth anything except the paper and also he paid the balance in full? Thanks


Asked on 4/07/09, 10:21 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Edward Hoffman Law Offices of Edward A. Hoffman

Re: Is this Criminal?

What you describe is indeed criminal.

Your claim that the lottery tickets "are not worth anything except the paper" is not true. If the tickets weren't worth anything then nobody would buy them. It might (or might not) be illegal for a retail purchaser to resell a ticket, but when your brother-in-law printed one he was allowed -- and probably required, per his contract with the lottery -- to sell it for its face value. The lottery was entitled to be paid for each ticket.

Your brother-in-law may have been allowed to buy as many tickets as he wanted for himself, but he was not allowed to simply take them without paying. He took something of value without paying for it, which is why it is a crime.

The claim that he "never intended to steal anything" seems wrong on its face. He printed the lottery tickets for himself intentionally. He may not have realized that he was stealing, but that doesn't change the fact that he was.

Paying the lottery after the fact was a smart move, but it does not retroactively change the fact that he stole the tickets in the first place. Making his victim whole will help him a lot when it comes to either negotiating a plea deal or being sentenced after trial, but it has nothing to do with whether he is guilty.

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Answered on 4/07/09, 10:31 pm


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