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COMMENTARY: Theft Embarrasses Lottery Again

The Arkansas Scholarship Lottery is moving past another black mark on its history, this one thanks to a South Carolina man who worked as its deputy security director and stole lottery tickets on the side.

Remmele Mazyck pleaded guilty recently in federal court in Little Rock to charges of wire fraud and money laundering. He admitted that, over a three-year span, he stole lottery tickets and collected winnings of close to $500,000.

The tickets came from the lottery’s storage warehouse. Mazyck logged in with his security code and activated the tickets, changing their status to “promotional,” then cashed the winning tickets among them. The 34-year-old cashed 22,710 tickets worth close to $478,000, according to reports.

His scheme was finally tripped up last October when a manager at Cash Saver in Jonesboro reported suspicious scratch-off tickets cashed at his store. A day later Mazyck was placed on administrative leave and soon after terminated by Lottery Director Bishop Woosley.

Woolsey was explaining all of this last week to the Arkansas Lottery Commission, which met in executive session for more than an hour to consider employee discipline. One of the commissioners had asked for the closed-door session.

Both Director Woosley and Lance Huey, the security director and Mazyck’s supervisor, met with the commission for parts of the meeting.

The commission reported taking no action in the session and didn’t say afterward what they talked about.

Such private sessions of a public body are supposed to be limited to consideration of “employment, appointment, promotion, demotion, disciplining or resignation” of a public officer or employee.

Woosley said he’ll wait until he reviews documents from the federal investigation to make a decision about disciplining any employees in connection with the theft by Mazyck.

Huey, a former Grant County sheriff, was hired by Ernie Passailaigue, the lottery’s former and first director. Passailaigue also hired Mazyck, bringing him from South Carolina to train Huey on Powerball security.

Mazyck was among several hired from Passailaigue’s old South Carolina lottery staff .

South Carolina officials have apparently looked back to see if Mazyck stole tickets there but found nothing.

About all the public knows about what happened in Arkansas is what the U.S. attorney who brought the charges against Mazyck and Director Woosley have explained about this scheme.

Mazyck could steal lottery tickets because he was put in charge of developing security policies and procedures. Woosley said a lot of the notifications about tickets being checked out of the warehouse went to Mazyck. So who else was to know when he took tickets?

Changes in the security plan won’t allow another employee to steal tickets from the lottery, Woosley said, asserting that Mazyck “set out from the very beginning to steal.”

Mazyck was found out, his theft discovered and the “promotional” status for lottery tickets has been eliminated, at least for now. Such tickets had been given away as a promotional tool at some large-scale events in the past.

The lottery obviously still needs security and Woosley plans to fill the position Mazyck had, but the job will be different and there will be more checks and balances in the system.

The lottery will get past this latest embarrassment and presumably the system is better for it.

The key is to find and fix any flaws that enabled Mazyck to steal from the lottery.

Meanwhile, Mazyck is awaiting sentencing on his federal charges.

He could get up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for wire fraud and up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for money laundering.

Some prize, huh?

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