A market clerk in Fullerton is scheduled to be arraigned this morning on charges he tried to fraudulently receive a state lottery prize from someone else's winning Scratchers ticket.
Muhammad Irfan Khan, 48, of Anaheim, was arrested in a sting that had him allegedly telling an undercover investigator a winning ticket was no good, keeping the ticket and then trying to claim the $1,000 prize, according to prosecutors.
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A statement from the Orange County District Attorney's office does not indicate what prompted the California State Lottery's law enforcement branch to target FM Food Store for a fraud investigation. But, on Oct. 22, 2013, an undercover investigator from that state agency entered the market on Harbor Boulevard in Fullerton with three special, traceable decoy Scratchers tickets.
Two were losing tickets and the third was a $1,000 winner. But after Khan checked the tickets in the state lottery computer system, he allegedly told the undercover all three were losing tickets.
Khan is accused of keeping the winning ticket after the investigator left the store and then fraudulently mailing the winning ticket in–after signing the Winner Claim Form under penalty of perjury stating he was the rightful owner. Khan allegedly did the same on Dec. 2.
He is charged with felony attempted grand theft, computer access and fraud, perjury by declaration and presenting a false claim. He was booked into jail on $20,000 bail and could spend up to four years in state prison with a conviction.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.