Taping A Florida Lottery Ticket Together Into A $1 Million Winner Takes Balls

This might actually be a fun trick to play here in a few weeks on the annual golf trip with the guys. 

Let's go to Florida where state lottery officials say Florida Man, Dakota Jones, and Florida woman, Kira Enders, tried to pull a fast one in the form of taping together lottery tickets to make it appear they'd won a $1 million prize.

Now, the couple is facing multiple felonies, according to the Escambia County Sheriff's Office, who says the case hinges on two $50 "500X The Cash" scratchers that officials say were taped together into a winner. 

"Each of those tickets were ripped horizontally and then carefully pieced together to become one fraudulently altered ticket using the top half of one of the actual tickets and the bottom half of the other," the sheriff's department reports. "That fraudulently altered ticket now visually shows that it is a $1 million prize winner."

(Kira Enders, left, and her boyfriend Dakota Jones are in big trouble over a 500X The Cash lottery ticket that state officials say is fraudulent. / Escambia County Sheriff's Office)

Here's how this case played out and how police got involved: 

• Enders submits the ticket as a winner with the state lottery office
• The state calls Enders and tells her to come back to fill out paperwork
• Enders and Jones head back to the state office where investigators were waiting for these two
• Enders claims she scratched off the winner and says she took it to three stores which told her it wouldn't scan
• She claims the ticket got rained on, ripped and fell apart before she scratched it, hence why the ticket was taped together

Cops say the couple's stories fell apart and now they both face forgery charges and a grand theft charge that has a steep prison sentence. 

C'mon, folks. We have to be smarter than this. Are you really going to risk rotting in prison while trying to trick state lottery officials? You might as well run a Match.com scam like the one that was shown on CBS Sunday Morning. 

This lady was scammed out of $2.5 million. 

Instead, Kira and Dakota are now in some major trouble over one of the most bone-headed moves in criminal history (allegedly). 

"I don't think this is gonna be a made-for-TV movie type of situation because, uh, it was clear to the lottery officials, and obviously clear to us, that she had taken two tickets with different, you know, one side had one serial number, the other side had the other serial number on it. Especially whenever you pretend like you've won a million dollars, they're gonna take a look at this at this ticket," Escambia Sheriff Chip Simmons told CBS News.