Woman Loses $1,250 in Another Lottery Ticket Scam : Crime: Canyon Country resident falls victim to woman who claimed she couldn’t cash her winning numbers in.

A Canyon Country resident was swindled out of about $1,250 by a woman claiming to have a winning lottery ticket and a male accomplice who pretended to be an innocent bystander, the second such scam in the area in eight days.

Lugina Rodriguez, 59, said a woman approached her in a discount store parking lot and claimed she had a Fantasy 5 lottery ticket worth $91,000, but could not cash it because she was an illegal alien. The woman offered Rodriguez $4,000 from the winnings to cash it--but said she wanted all of the money in Rodriguez’s bank account as collateral for the ticket.

“I was embarrassed for myself and I felt like I had egg on my face because I believed it,” said Rodriguez, who works as an assembler at a plant in Sylmar. “It was like somebody hit me over the head.”

The suspects remain at large, said Lt. Harvey Cantor of the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station. He said numerous similar incidents have occurred in Santa Clarita, but estimates that “fewer than half a dozen” have taken place within the past year.

The suspects have differed in at least some of the schemes, according to sheriff’s reports.

Rodriguez said she was coming out of the JJ Newberry’s store at 19200 Soledad Canyon Road at about 4 p.m. Thursday when the woman, a Latino about 45 years old, approached and said she was trying to find lawyers who were supposed to be providing free services that day at the location. She said she was sick and needed medicine, but was in the country illegally and didn’t know where she could go for help.

The seemingly distraught woman also said she needed the money from the lottery ticket to pay for medical expenses.

A Latino male in his mid-30s walked up as the two women were talking and said he would be glad to help the woman cash the lottery ticket, Rodriguez said. He left and returned a few minutes later with what he said was $3,000, handing it to the woman, then encouraged Rodriguez to do the same.

“I thought he was very nice,” Rodriguez said, adding that both sounded convincing. “It was like the movies. They were like that.”

Rodriguez went to her bank nearby and gave the woman $1,000 of the $1,500 she had in her bank account, plus about $250 in her purse. The woman gave Rodriguez the ticket, which she later discovered was a non-winning ticket purchased in May.

The woman then said she needed prescription medication from a nearby drug store, Rodriguez said, and asked the man to get it for her because she was feeling ill. The man went into the store first, but said he couldn’t get the medicine because it was to be prescribed to women only, so Rodriguez went into the store instead.

She came out of the drug store after an employee said no request for the medicine had been made and discovered the couple had disappeared.

“I started feeling like I wanted to cry,” she said.

Anyone 18 years of age or older is eligible to play the California Lottery and claim prizes, including illegal aliens, said Bob Taylor, a lottery spokesman. He urged people to avoid propositions from people claiming to have winning tickets or to at least verify the ticket with lottery officials or a retailer selling the tickets.

Such schemes, known as “pigeon drops,” are common in Southern California, nearly all targeting older people, according to law enforcement officials. A culprit typically offers something reportedly of value to a victim in return for cash, with a nearby accomplice pretending to be a stranger accepting the offer enthusiastically and persuading the victim to do the same.

A 72-year-old widow was swindled out of her $800 life savings and jewelry July 6 by two men, one of whom was trying to unload bars he claimed were made of gold, according to a sheriff’s report. The second man, pretending to be a bystander, “bought” one of the bars for $10,000 and convinced the widow to buy a second bar for whatever she could pay, and they could sell the bars to a K mart store for $20,000 each.

The bars turned out to be made of brass. K mart employees said they would never agree to such a sale, even if the bars were gold.