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Who owns the contested Arizona Lottery ticket that hit the $12.8 million jackpot last fall? That question is getting only more difficult to answer.
There were already several parties asserting ownership of the winning ticket, which had been printed but not sold before it hit the jackpot on Nov. 24. Lottery regulations suggest it belongs to Circle K, which pays the lottery for every ticket it prints. The store manager, Robert Gawlitza, claims it’s his after he “bought” the winning ticket the next morning.
Now, a recent filing in the legal dispute over the ticket identified two more people with possible claims to the jackpot. One is a Maricopa County resident whose purchase of several lottery tickets caused the winning ticket — which she did not pay for — to be printed. The woman’s legal name is printed in the filing, but she asked Phoenix New Times to identify her as Anna Kim. The other person is Marline Ybarra, an employee of the Circle K on Bell Road in north Phoenix who “sold” the winning The Pick ticket to the store’s manager the morning after the drawing.
When reached by New Times, Kim did not say whether she will press a claim to the ticket. She is not listed as a party in the lawsuit. In May, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge issued a subpoena to identify Kim using her banking information, though it’s not clear if that’s ultimately what led to her identification. Attorneys for Circle K, which is in possession of the winning ticket and is asking a Maricopa County Superior Court judge to declare a rightful owner, declined to comment.
But Ybarra is staking a claim to the winnings and is now listed as a defendant in the case. Notably, Ybarra is being represented by the same attorney as Robert Gawlitza, the Circle K manager who “bought” the winning ticket the day after the Nov. 24 drawing.
In its complaint, Circle K alleges that Gawlitza realized the winning ticket was in the store the next morning. He then clocked out and changed out of his uniform — presumably to avoid running afoul of Arizona Lottery regulations that prevent vendors from purchasing tickets while on the job — and then paid $10 for the ticket, which he knew was the winner. Ybarra signed the back of his ticket, theoretically making it official, though Circle K later confiscated it.
It’s not clear whether Ybarra and Gawlitza reached an agreement regarding the ticket’s winnings. Their attorney, Joshua Kolsrud of Kolsrud Law Offices, did not respond to questions from New Times.
The new filing, an amended complaint from Circle K, contains a few new details about the saga. Previous filings noted that a customer (now identified as Kim) requested $85 in tickets but paid for only $60, and that the remainder were set aside and not sold. However, the latest version of the complaint now says “some of the tickets fell behind the printer,” raising a question of whether Kim knew they had been printed. The complaint also notes that Kim asked to rerun numbers from previously purchased tickets, though it’s not clear if the winning ticket had one of those requested numbers.
At some point — the complaint does not specify when — Ybarra “discovered” the unsold tickets and “placed them beside the register.” The next day, she “sold” the winning ticket to Gawlitza.
A county judge will now be tasked with untangling who is the rightful owner of the ticket. The case had been in a holding pattern because Kim was unidentified and Gawlitza had not been served, but those hurdles seem to have now been cleared. There was once a ticking clock to determine an answer, but the Arizona Lottery waived the 180-day deadline to claim the ticket so that the case could proceed.
Though Circle K has not requested the judge to declare it the rightful owner — its complaint only asks the court to determine a rightful owner — Arizona Lottery regulations would suggest the ticket belongs to the gas station giant. Lottery rules state that printed but unsold tickets represent a legal wager because vendors like Circle K pay the Arizona Lottery for each ticket they print, regardless of whether a sale is made. Rules also state that a printed but unsold winning ticket belongs to the vendor.
Zach Buchanan
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