Father, Son Admit Doctoring Lottery Tickets

A not-so-elaborate lottery scam turned sour for a father-son team who pleaded no contest to forging winning tickets after Kern County authorities found them with sticky fingers.

Jackie Lee Shineflew, 58, and his son, Tommy Lee Shineflew, 20, netted less than $100 in the scam, which involved pasting together lottery tickets to make them look like winners.

The elder Shineflew could receive up to three years in prison and his son could get 16 months when they are sentenced in March on the counterfeiting charges.

Kern County sheriff’s deputies arrested the pair last month after finding razor blades, pens, three varieties of glue and 13 cut-out lottery ticket pieces in their car.

They also found dried glue beneath the Shineflews’ fingernails and a pile of lottery tickets on the car floor with holes cut where numbers used to be.

“It was a crude operation. . . . If you looked at it closely, you could tell,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Joe Beckett said.

The younger Shineflew allegedly bought the scratch-off tickets from stores in the Oildale section of Bakersfield. His father was accused of cutting symbols from other tickets and gluing them over existing symbols, according to court documents.

The elder Shineflew successfully cashed two $20 “Holiday Surprise” winners at the same 7-11 store on Jan. 14. But he was thwarted on a third try when a store employee flicked off the pasted-on piece.

Shineflew ran from the scene but was arrested Jan. 22 when he tried to cash an altered ticket in exchange for five lottery tickets.

A clerk recognized the fraud and alerted the store manager, who held Shineflew for authorities, according to court documents.