A Greeley man who won $300,000 last month on a scratch card he got at the convenience store he managed now is being investigated on suspicion of lottery fraud.
This week, the Nebraska Department of Revenue got a search warrant to take back the money that Jeremiah Ehlers had won, which came to $213,000 after taxes.
In response, his bank turned over a cashier’s check for just under $128,800. Some $84,200 shy.
In the affidavit for the search warrant, Deputy State Sheriff Bradley Burleigh of the Nebraska Department of Revenue said that on April 12, Ehlers had taken a winning “Diamond Dollars” scratch ticket to the Nebraska Lottery headquarters, claimed the prize and deposited it in his bank account the same day.
Burleigh said Ehlers was fired a week later from his job as manager of the Rapid Stop convenience store in Greeley, where he’d gotten the ticket.
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He said the district manager for the chain later contacted the Nebraska Lottery investigation unit saying he was investigating Ehlers for allegedly stealing lottery tickets from the Greeley store.
Burleigh said the district manager suspected Ehlers had been taking lottery tickets from the business without paying for them since October, and security video from April 12 allegedly showed him taking a “Diamond Dollars” lottery ticket without paying, scratching it, scanning it twice on the lottery terminal and only then paying for it.
In the affidavit for the search warrant, Burleigh said he believed the money in the bank account “will disappear if not seized, and the money is evidence of theft.”
An employee told him Ehlers already had bought a 2019 Dodge Ram and was contacting people around Greeley paying debts. Ehlers hadn’t been charged with a crime as of Thursday afternoon.