A former convenience store owner has pleaded guilty to fraud after he collected the winnings from a stolen lottery ticket.
Hafiz Malik admitted he pinched the Lotto 649 ticket, worth $5.7 million, that belonged to four friends.
Lorraine Teicht, Paul Carlisi, Silvana and Aurora Pincivero, who regularly played the lotto together, did some detective work and discovered their numbers had come up on a winning ticket in June 2004, which they didn’t claim.
On Friday Malik agreed to a statement of facts read in court and confessed to cashing in the ticket in January of 2005. He’ll be sentenced in March.
One of the friends took the multi-million dollar ticket to a Dupont and Dufferin convenience store to be checked, but the machine didn’t make a noise indicating a jackpot win. Malik told her it was worthless and kept it for himself.
This happened before an
insider wins scandal rocked the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation and led to an overhaul at the agency.
Malik closed down his shop and purchased a luxury home and several cars after claiming the cash for himself, seven months after the rightful owner of the ticket had it checked.
He was arrested in December 2007.
The four friends
ended up getting what was rightfully theirs. After Malik was charged, the
OLG presented them with a cheque for the $5.75 million, plus an additional $788,000 in interest.