程阳：美国加州彩票安全执法值得中国借鉴

Leading the Way in Consumer Protection

The California Lottery boasts one of the largest and most effective law enforcement operations in the country.

The efforts of the Lottery’s Security/Law Enforcement Division (SLED) have been well documented with multiple features on the nationally televised show Dateline NBC. But it’s all the hard work behind the scenes that people don’t see that makes SLED such a success.

This past April, two suspects began committing armed robberies at retailer stores, stealing lottery products in the San Diego, National City and Spring Valley areas. As more robberies continued, the suspects were routinely beating the clerks. After stealing the lottery products, the suspects were redeeming the stolen winning tickets at retailer stores throughout the San Diego area.

Lottery Investigator Lynn Roloff took the initiative and used the new “Tivoli” system to monitor the stolen ticket redemptions in near real-time. Investigator Roloff, while in Sacramento, communicated the real-time information to Investigator Sheldon Grover in San Diego. Investigator Grover responded to the cashing locations to obtain surveillance video of the suspects and suspects’ vehicles, and then shared the information with the San Diego Police Robbery Division and other allied law enforcement agencies.

Investigator Grover teamed with San Diego Police Robbery Detectives, and while using a police helicopter, began tracking the near real-time cashing of the stolen tickets in an effort to apprehend the suspects.

As a result of Investigator Roloff and Investigator Grover’s diligent efforts, two suspects were identified and apprehended and the number of robberies in the San Diego area decreased significantly.

This past November, a player in Southern California purchased a winning lottery ticket. Fortunately, the player signed the reverse side of the ticket, then completed a winner’s claim form and mailed it by depositing the envelope in a US Post Office mailbox located in South Gate.

After a period of time passed, the owner of the winning ticket contacted the Lottery and asked for a status of his claim. After nothing matching his name was found, an inquiry and investigation was opened. During the investigation, it was learned that several suspects stole mail from this mailbox using the “fishing” method. This was how the suspects subsequently retrieved the player’s envelope containing the winning ticket. The suspects then washed the claimant’s inked signature from the reverse side of the ticket and submitted it with their false claim for the prize award. The stolen ticket avoided initial detection of being altered and the suspects were awarded a State Controller’s Office (SCO) warrant for the winning ticket’s prize value. This was a difficult and complicated investigation and Investigator Pete Araujo made repeated efforts to coordinate with the SCO to obtain the cancelled warrant. He then contacted the United States Postal Inspectors and coordinated a joint Federal–State criminal investigation.

Investigators Araujo and Manuel Ortiz conducted exhaustive measures to piece together the facts. Their efforts resulted in a United States Federal Judge issuing a Federal search warrant of the suspects’ residence. The search revealed additional stolen mail and other physical evidence indicating an elaborate stolen credit card and stolen check operation.

These are just a few of the many success stories from SLED this past year. Every day our team of investigators work very hard toward fulfilling their mission which states that they will promote and ensure the integrity, security, honesty, and fairness of the operation and administration of the lottery. By fulfilling this mission, our players can feel confident in knowing that the California Lottery is doing everything it can to protect our valued customers.