$5 million lottery ticket scam: A New York state lottery investigator testified that one of the brothers who allegedly stole a $5 million lottery ticket from a man could not remember when he won the ticket, including the day, month, or year.
Investigator Jay Hemlock said in court that he talked with Andy and Nayel Ashkar, who are accused of taking the ticket from a man in Syracuse, in March 2012 when they went to claim their prize.
“I spent a good amount of time trying to elicit more specific information-- the time of day the ticket was allegedly purchased and scratched,” Hemlock said, according to The Post-Standard. “I asked if it was cold out, hot out, if he had a jacket on, was it raining, snowing. I pretty much got ‘I don’t know’ as the answer.”
Andy Ashkar is accused of stealing the ticket from Robert Miles at The Green Ale Market on Oct. 27, 2006. Prosecutors say Ashkar told Miles, a maintenance worker, the winning ticket was worth $5,000 and paid him $4,000 and kept the other $1,000 for the store, which his father owns.
Nayel Ashkar is accused of conspiring with his brother to try to claim the winnings just before the ticket expired. The jackpot was to be paid out over 20 years, not in a lump sum.
Prosecutor Beth Van Doren, in her opening statement, said the issue wasn’t that the defendants waited so long to try to cash it.
“That is a legal right of the rightful owner,” Van Doren said. “Robert Miles is the actual owner. Co-workers saw the elation, the devastation of Miles. He lost the ticket when Andy Ashkar snatched it from his hand.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
