A Circle K store manager in Scottsdale, Arizona, is being sued over $12.8 million in lottery tickets he allegedly purchased from his store after confirming he had won.
Circle K filed a lawsuit in Maricopa County Superior Court this week, asking a judge to decide who legally owns the ticket. According to 12 News, this is one of the largest lottery prizes in Arizona history (1).
Here’s how it went down.
On Nov. 24, 2025, a customer walked into the Circle K at 5601 E. Bell Road in Scottsdale and asked a clerk to replay lottery numbers previously used in that evening’s drawing of The Pick, an Arizona Lottery game. The officer printed $1 tickets worth $85. The customer just paid $60 and left, leaving 25 tickets at the box office.
That night, one of the remaining tickets matched all six numbers, winning the $12.8 million jackpot. According to the Arizona Lottery, this is the fourth-largest prize in The Pick history and the largest jackpot won in Arizona since 2019.
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 someone had won the jackpot, according to court documents.
He then took off his Circle K uniform and had another employee search the remaining tickets, including the winning one, for $10. He signed the back of the ticket.
Circle K management located the ticket at their corporate offices, where it is still there today, and ordered it.
That’s what the case 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 the customer rejects or abandons and the ticket is not resold, that ticket becomes the retailer’s property. Retailers pay the Arizona Lottery for every ticket they print, whether the tickets sell or not.
“It basically says in the administrative rules that, if push comes to shove, the retailer owns the tickets,” Arizona state Rep. Jeff Weninger, a Republican from Chandler and chairman of the House Commerce Committee, told AZFamily (2).
But Arizona Lottery rules also prohibit store employees from playing any lottery games “while working,” according to the Phoenix New Times (3). Gawlitza may know this rule; This explains why he went beyond working hours and changed into his uniform before buying the ticket.
Former Arizona Lottery spokesman John Edgar told Phoenix New Times that it was unusual to have 25 unsold tickets lying around. While some retailers pre-print tickets during jackpot runs, it is in the retailer’s best interest to sell every ticket it prints because it pays them no matter what.
Circle K cited the retailer ownership rule in its complaint but refrained from claiming direct 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.
Arizona Lottery, named as a defendant in the lawsuit, said it was never involved in such a thing. “This is a unique situation and we are not aware of any prior litigation of this nature involving the Arizona Lottery,” a spokesperson told AZFamily (2).
There is also the ticking of the clock. The ticket must be claimed within 180 days of the draw – this deadline is May 23, 2026. According to Hoodline (4) if no one makes a valid claim by that date, a portion of the jackpot will go to the Lottery’s beneficiaries and the rest will return to the prize pool. This has happened before in Arizona; In 2019, The Pick jackpot of $14.6 million went unclaimed and the money was redirected.
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The Arizona Lottery may not have seen it exactly this way, but store employees and lottery insiders have a long history of claiming prizes. It rarely ends well.
The closest parallel is Aaron McVicker, manager of Casey’s General Store in Dubuque, Iowa. A Powerball ticket printed at its store in November 2022 was considered a defective ticket and was set aside unsold. McVicker reportedly came into the store and bought it the next day when an employee scanned it and realized it was worth $100,000, according to the Iowa Capital Dispatch (5).
Casey fired him. The company said he violated store policy and lied multiple times during the investigation. An administrative law judge denied his claim for unemployment benefits, ruling that he purchased 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.”
If a ticket is mistakenly printed and not sold in time for the drawing, it remains the property of the business that produced the ticket, Iowa Lottery spokeswoman Mary Neubauer said. “There have been situations over the years where a retail store has claimed a reward after mistakenly printing a ticket they owned,” he told the Iowa Capital Dispatch.
According to the latest available report, the $100,000 prize had not been submitted to the Iowa Lottery for payment. Iowa Powerball prizes must be claimed within 180 days of the drawing.
According to CBS News, a convenience store clerk in Lakeville, Massachusetts named Carly Nunes pocketed a $3 million Mega Millions ticket that a customer left behind after purchasing chips and lottery tickets (6). He tried to claim the prize at the lottery headquarters with a ticket that appeared to be torn and burned. When lottery officials became suspicious, Nunes told them that she had bought the ticket and that the damage was caused by the ticket being accidentally placed in a pipe.
Security cameras told a different story. According to NBC Boston, after a month-long investigation, Massachusetts State Police tracked down Paul Little, the real jackpot winner (7). Nunes pleaded guilty to making a false claim and was sentenced to two years probation. Little told NBC Boston that Nunes is young enough to learn from the mistake: “I wish her the best and pray good things happen to her.”
Then there’s Eddie Tipton, director of security for the Multi-State Lottery Association, the organization responsible for managing Hot Lotto. According to ABC News (8), Tipton used his access to upload malicious code to a random number generator and conduct fraudulent drawings in multiple states.
His plan began to unravel when he tried to claim the $14.3 million Iowa jackpot through an anonymous offshore trust in Belize. Payment was denied because Iowa rules do not allow anonymous reward claims. When authorities released security footage of the convenience store where the ticket was purchased, a former co-worker identified Tipton.
Investigators later discovered he had also rigged drawings in Colorado, Wisconsin, Kansas and Oklahoma. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison and ordered to pay $2.2 million in restitution in 2017, according to NBC News (9).
The Circle K case differs from most of these examples in one important respect: no customers were deceived. The first buyer paid for 60 tickets and walked away. The other 25 people were abandoned.
The question for the court is whether Gawlitza’s purchase counts as a bona fide transaction or whether the unsold ticket already belongs to Circle K. And whether a store employee can buy a ticket that they already know is a winning ticket.
Circle K receives a 6.5% commission on lottery sales made through its stores, according to the Arizona Lottery. Retailers selling jackpot winning tickets for in-state sweepstakes games will also be able to receive a $10,000 bonus for grand prizes over $1 million.
Lottery commissions and retailers across the country will likely be watching this closely. Whatever the court decides could shape how these disputes are handled going forward and whether running out of statutes and buying a winning ticket at the box office is a loophole or a dead end.
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12 News/KPNX (1); AZ Family (2); Phoenix New Times (3); Title (4); Iowa Capital Transfer (5); CBS News (6); NBCBoston (7); ABC News (8); NBC News (9)
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