A manager of a Circle K store in Scottsdale, Arizona, is being sued over a $12.8 million lottery ticket he allegedly bought at his own store — after confirming he was a winner.
Circle K filed the lawsuit this week in Maricopa County Superior Court, asking a judge to decide who legally owns the ticket. It is one of the largest lottery prizes in Arizona history, according to 12 News (1).
Here’s how it went.
On November 24, 2025, a customer entered the Circle K at 5601 E. Bell Road in Scottsdale and asked a clerk to retrieve lottery numbers previously used for that evening’s drawing of The Pick, an Arizona lottery game. The clerk printed $85 worth of $1 bills. The customer paid for only $60 and left, leaving behind 25 tickets on the counter.
That night, one of those remaining tickets matched all six numbers, landing a $12.8 million jackpot. It is the fourth largest prize in The Pick history and the largest jackpot won in Arizona in 2019, according to the Arizona Lottery.
The next morning, store manager Robert Gawlitza arrived for his shift and learned that a winning ticket had been printed at his location. He found the remaining tickets and confirmed that one was the jackpot winner, according to court documents.
Then he left, took off his Circle K uniform and had another employee call him for the remaining tickets — including the winner — for $10. He signed the back of the ticket.
Circle K management found out and ordered the ticket held at its corporate offices, where it remains today.
That’s what the process is trying to solve – and the answer isn’t as simple as you might think.
Under the Arizona Administrative Code, when a retailer prints a lottery ticket that a customer refuses or abandons and the ticket is not resold, the ticket becomes the property of the retailer. Retailers pay the Arizona Lottery for every ticket they print, whether those tickets are sold or not.
“The administrative rules say if they overprint, the merchant owns the tickets,” Arizona state Rep. Jeff Weninger, a Chandler Republican and chairman of the House Commerce Committee, told AZFamily (2).
But Arizona Lottery rules also prohibit store employees from playing any lottery game “while on the job,” according to the Phoenix New Times (3). Gawlitza may have known about that rule — which would explain why he left and changed his uniform before buying the ticket.
It’s unusual to have 25 tickets unsold, former Arizona Lottery spokesman John Edgar told the Phoenix New Times. While some retailers pre-print tickets during big jackpot races, it’s in the retailer’s best interest to sell every ticket they print because they pay for them regardless.
Circle K cited the retail possession rule in its complaint, but did not claim ownership. Instead, the company is asking the court to decide whether the ticket was validly sold, who legally owns it and who gets the $12.8 million.
The Arizona Lottery, named as a defendant in the lawsuit, said it has never dealt with such a thing. “This is a unique situation and we are not aware of any previous litigation of this nature involving the Arizona Lottery,” a spokesperson told AZFamily (2).
There is also a ticking clock. The ticket must be claimed within 180 days of the drawing — the deadline is May 23, 2026. If no one makes a valid claim by then, a portion of the jackpot goes to Lottery beneficiaries and the rest goes back into the prize pool, according to Hoodline (4). It’s happened in Arizona before – a $14.6 million The Pick jackpot went unclaimed in 2019 and the money was diverted.
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The Arizona Lottery may not have seen this exact situation, but store employees and lottery insiders have a long history of trying to claim prizes. It rarely ends well.
The closest parallel is Aaron McVicker, a manager of Casey’s General Store in Dubuque, Iowa. In November 2022, a Powerball ticket printed at his store was treated as a mistake ticket and set aside unsold. When an employee scanned it the next day and found it was worth $100,000, McVicker came to the store and bought it, according to the Iowa Capital Dispatch (5).
Casey fired him. The company said he violated store policy and lied several times during the investigation. An administrative law judge denied his claim for unemployment benefits, ruling that he bought the ticket “only after confirming it was a winning ticket” and that, as a store manager, he was “held to a higher standard than other employees.”
Iowa Lottery spokeswoman Mary Neubauer noted that when a ticket is mistakenly printed and not sold in time for the drawing, it remains the property of the business that generated it. “There have been cases over the years where a retail location has claimed a prize from a ticket they owned after printing it by mistake,” she told the Iowa Capital Dispatch.
As of last available reporting, the $100,000 prize had not been presented to the Iowa Lottery for payment. Iowa Powerball prizes must be claimed within 180 days of the drawing.
In Lakeville, Massachusetts, a convenience store clerk named Carly Nunes pocketed a $3 million Mega Millions winning ticket that a customer had left behind after buying lottery chips and tickets, according to CBS News (6). She tried to claim the prize at the lottery headquarters with a ticket that was torn and appeared burned. When lottery officials got suspicious, Nunes told them she bought the ticket herself and that the damage was from accidental placement on a pipe.
Surveillance footage told a different story. After a month-long investigation, Massachusetts State Police found the rightful winner, Paul Little, who won his jackpot, NBC Boston reported (7). Nunes pleaded guilty to filing a false claim and was sentenced to two years of probation. Little told NBC Boston that Nunes was young enough to learn from his mistakes: “I wish him the best and pray that good things come his way.”
Then there’s Eddie Tipton – the director of security for the Multi-State Lottery Association, the very organization responsible for running Hot Lotto. According to ABC News (8), Tipton used his access to install malicious code on the random number generator and manipulated drawings in several states.
His scheme began to unravel when he tried to claim a $14.3 million jackpot in Iowa through an anonymous offshore trust in Belize. Iowa rules do not allow anonymous prize claims, so the payment was declined. When authorities released surveillance footage from the store where the ticket was purchased, a former co-worker identified Tipton.
Investigators later found he also tampered with drawings in Colorado, Wisconsin, Kansas and Oklahoma. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2017 and ordered to pay $2.2 million in restitution, according to NBC News (9).
The Circle K case differs from most of these examples in one respect: no customers were defrauded. The original buyer paid for 60 tickets and left. The other 25 were abandoned.
The question for the court is whether Gawlitza’s purchase counts as an actual transaction — or whether the unsold ticket already belonged to Circle K. And whether a store employee can buy a ticket he already knows is a winner.
Circle K earns a 6.5 percent commission on lottery sales from its stores, according to the Arizona Lottery. Retailers who sell a jackpot-winning ticket for the state’s drawing games can also receive a $10,000 bonus for top prizes of more than $1 million.
Lottery commissions and retailers across the country will likely be watching closely. Whatever the court decides could influence how these disputes are handled in the future — and whether checking out and buying a winning ticket at the counter is a loophole or a dead end.
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We only rely on verified sources and credible third-party reports. For details, see our ethics and editorial guidelines.
12 News/KPNX (1); AZFamily (2); Phoenix New Times (3); Hoodline (4); Iowa Capital Dispatch (5); CBS News (6); NBC Boston (7); ABC News (8); NBC News (9)
This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. Offered without warranty of any kind.
