Not much of a career but he managed to limit it anyway. A 24-hour gas station operator was working the graveyard shift and started scratching off lottery tickets.
The Minneapolis, MN Star Tribune has the story:
An itch the clerk couldn't stop scratching
Bryan W. Lietz says he doesn't know what came over him.
"It's not me to normally be a thief," the 40-year-old resident of Perham, Minn., said Friday.
But in the wee hours of May 12, as Lietz worked the graveyard shift at the Perham Conoco, he apparently was just that, allegedly scratching off $1,400 worth of lottery tickets without paying for them, according to a criminal complaint.
When he finished, he sat down and penned a letter of apology to his boss.
"I don't know why I bit the hand that fed me or still does," he wrote. "I truly need this job. I don't have a clue why I did this. I don't know really how it happened. But here it is. I did it."
Lietz was charged this week in Otter Tail County with state lottery fraud, a felony offense. He was released on his own recognizance and since has repaid some of what he owes.
He was fired, too.
Wow... $1,400 worth -- even if these were $5 tickets, that is still 280 tickets and if you were scratching them off at a rate of one every 30 seconds, that would be 2.3 hours. He must have been doing them by the fistful!
