Lottery Ticket Scratcher Latest Get-Rich Scam

The latest entrepreneurs hoping to profit from the state lottery with a related business have invented a scratch-off ticket scraper.

“It’s one of those things where if you don’t do it, somebody else will,” said Stan W. Pettijohn, a Lodi welder who has teamed with Lodi truck driver John Krueg to produce the key-sized plastic device that will be shaped like California.

They’ve invested $6,000 in start-up costs, including patent fees. Production of 10,000 of the green scrapers, which apparently will retail for under $1 each, was to start this week at a plastics plant in Galt.

The scraper is designed to help lottery players remove the coating from tickets without having to search for objects such as keys or coins, the inventors said.

“I’m up and down California and I see people with their fingernails, knives, keys. . . ,” Krueg said. “Everybody who has seen the prototype wants it.”