Baton Rouge Gas Station Clerk Accused of Skimming $5,485 in Lottery Proceeds

A Baton Rouge gas station clerk has been arrested and accused of taking more than $5,000 in lottery tickets and winnings from the store where she worked, more than two years after the alleged theft.

Baton Rouge Police say Detisha Steib, now 27, was working at the Kangaroo Express on Millerville Road on Jan. 1, 2024, when she allegedly scanned multiple "Fast Play" lottery tickets without paying for them. According to an affidavit, surveillance footage later showed her removing winning lottery ticket proceeds from the store register.

The tickets and proceeds she is accused of taking added up to $5,485, arrest records say. Steib was arrested on Thursday, July 9, 2026, and booked on one count of skimming of lottery proceeds, a felony.

Why it is a felony and not just theft

Louisiana has a specific charge for this, rather than a generic theft count, because lottery ticket sales and prize money do not belong to the store. Retailers sell tickets on the lottery's behalf and hand the proceeds back to the state, keeping a commission on sales and on cashing winners. We explain that arrangement in how lottery retailers get paid. Skimming those proceeds is treated as taking money that was never the store's to begin with.

What Fast Play tickets are

Fast Play is not a scratch-off. The tickets print at the lottery terminal, the way a draw-game slip does. Because a clerk can print one at the counter, they are the kind of ticket an employee could run through the terminal without ringing up a sale.

This is theft from the store, not from players

The two often get mixed up, so it is worth separating them. Here, the accusation is that a clerk took tickets and register money from her employer. The version that hits players directly is when a clerk tells a customer their winning ticket is a loser and claims the prize themselves. That has happened elsewhere, including the case of a Florida Winn-Dixie worker charged with scratch-off ticket theft.

Protecting yourself against that second kind costs nothing. A clerk cannot actually tell whether your ticket is a winner by looking at it (here is why), so check it yourself before you hand it to anyone. You can check a ticket online or scan it in your state lottery's app, and confirm a winner on your own.

The Baton Rouge case now goes to the courts. If you play in the state, current Louisiana scratch-offs are on our Louisiana page.

Sources

WBRZ: Woman arrested, accused of stealing thousands in lottery proceeds from Millerville Road gas station