I am a retired attorney writing this for my friend, Adam. Adam is a hardworking family man. He got his degree in Business Administration going to college at night. While in college Adam started working for Cumberland Farms. By 1995, he had won a Manager of the Year award, and a Citizenship Award from the West Hartford Police for his efforts in apprehending a criminal. In 1996, Adam married. In 1998, they had their first child and Adam bought a convenience store. 4 years later, they had their 2nd child and Adam acquired his 2nd store.
Adam had been an infrequent lottery player until he bought his first store. He began to buy more and more tickets from his own store, which was also a lottery vendor. He became addicted to buying tickets and soon his stores were among the highest grossing lottery sales outlets in New Britain and CT. Whenever he won a jackpot, he put the money right back into the lottery. In 2000, as well as working 40 or more hours at his stores, he began working full time for the State of Connecticut. This gave him medical benefits for his family and more cash flow to support his growing lottery addiction.
By 2003, Adam had a wife and 2 children; in 2008, Adam's 3rd daughter was born, he had 2 stores plus a full time job. He had 7 employees running the stores; weekdays, he worked for the State, evenings, nights and weekends, he worked at the stores. BUT NO MATTER HOW MUCH ADAM WORKED, he was always in debt and scrambling for money. All extra money went into buying lottery tickets. All money he won in the lottery went back into the lottery to buy more tickets. If Adam won a $6000 prize, that same week his regular purchases of tickets would increase by $6000. In 2007, Adam won a $50,000 jackpot for which he collected $37,000 after the Lottery subtracted for taxes due. Within 2 weeks of receiving the money, Adam had spent the entire $37,000 on buying more tickets.
Adam's family was not aware of his wins or losses. When customers were not in his store, he would print and buy tickets for his own use. One of his New Britain stores became the second largest Lottery vendor in the city. In February of 2008, the Lottery Commission called him in to their headquarters to discuss both his high store volume and his frequent personal winnings. He told them his sales were so high because not only was he buying tickets with his regular earnings but also with all the money he won. It should be noted that all the money he “won” never put him “ahead” but just less “behind” until he bought more tickets and then sank even lower. The Lottery Commission knew they had a Compulsive Gambler on their hands, but apparently, as long as he paid for the tickets he bought, they did not care what happened to Adam or his family. The Lottery extended credit to Adam, when he fell behind in paying for tickets his store sold. They violated their own guidelines to keep him selling tickets.
The pressure became too much, and in July 2008, Adam had a nervous breakdown. Whenever Adam went to his stores, when no customers were present, he printed tickets non-stop. He did not cash any tickets; he did not even look to see if he had a winner. He just printed tickets and stayed after closing just to print more. After 18 days, the Lottery closed Adam down all sales are supposed to be paid in full each week). They had violated their own guidelines. And that was one of many times the lottery illegally extended credit.
Now they set out to collect the face value of the approximately 135,000 tickets Adam printed and ignored the fact that none of the winning tickets had been cashed and that these tickets had no value except the paper they were printed on. Right away Adam admitted what he did, and signed, under pressure, an agreement to pay the tickets, although none of them were cashed. After making a payment to the lottery, Adam declared Bankruptcy in October 2010, and had his lottery debt cancelled. Soon thereafter, The Lottery had Adam arrested for Grand Larceny. The felony arrest warrant was full of false statements and false charges. It was eventually reduced to a misdemeanor, which also should not have stood as Adam was the first and only lottery vendor criminally arrested for failing to pay for merely printing tickets. There were and are a lot of other lottery vendors who are delinquent for for over $100,000 (a total of over $6 million) and none has ever been arrested. Lottery delinquency is a matter for civil court, not criminal. CT Lottery used the criminal court as a collection agency and to shut Adam up for his attempts to expose the Lottery's questionable practices.
In January 2009, Adam established a blog www.ctlotterywinners.org for which he began using The Freedom Of Information Act (FOI) to gather relevant statistics on the State Lottery. He also began publicly testifying before the State Legislature on the perils of gambling and against the expansion of it. He revealed on his blog how the Lottery preyed on the poor in the State and encouraged, rather than deterred, problem, addicted and compulsive gamblers. Adam is an expert in data and his work has appeared in many newspapers.
After his case was in court for almost two years Adam ran out of money. His lawyer demanded more money to defend him at trial but Adam had no more to give him. To ensure staying out of jail, Adam agreed to an "Alford" plea, that did not admit guilt but did not contest the charges which resulted in a tainted conviction with illegal sentencing provisions. He was sentenced to 5 years probation which resulted in his being separated from his family who had to move out of state for economic reasons. By state law Adam should never have been given 5 years of probation nor ordered not to pursue FOI pertaining to his case and to drop all pending FOI requests. When Adam's 5 year probation was about to end, the State claimed he was in violation and wanted to punish him further. A new judge heard the State's complaint and not only denied it, but declared that the original sentence was ILLEGAL and discharged Adam from probation and any remaining restitution. The prosecutor, at that time, also, agreed with the judge that the sentence had been illegal. Which begs the question, WHY DID THE STATE ATTORNEY'S OFFICE ASK FOR AND OBTAIN AN ILLEGAL SENTENCE?
For the last 6 years Adam has lived in a house with no heat and no running water, because not only was he required to pay the lottery tickets that he printed, but he also had to support his family who had moved to Virgnia for economic reasons.
Adam has changed his life. He has not gambled since 2008. In June 2011 Adam bacame a runner, and since then he has participated in over 200 races, including marathons and ultra marathon. He is on his way to racing in every towns in Connecticut. So far, he has raced in 135 towns out of the 169 Connecticut towns, and has only 34 towns left.
Finally, Adam resumed working for the State. Although he was placed in a much lower position than he had previously attained, he has discovered disturbing State practices costing the State millions of dollars. Due to his efforts, there is a State Public Hearing scheduled for 3 days in September.
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