A Tennessee gas station clerk’s plan to cheat a customer out of a $1 million lottery ticket and to claim it for himself was thwarted after store video captured the clerk pretending to throw the ticket away and then celebrating after retrieving it from the trash, according to prosecutors. He went to Tennessee Lottery’s district office in Nashville on July 16 to cash the seven-figure winning ticket, according to court documents. But lottery employees became suspicious after analyzing Mr. Patel’s identification and hearing his story about finding the ticket in the trash, court documents said. The lottery employees then asked police to review video from the Shell station in Murfreesboro where the ticket was bought, the local station WSMV reported. “He knew it was a winning ticket,” Lt. Steve Craig of the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office said in an interview on Wednesday.

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Persons: Meer Patel, Patel, “, Steve Craig Organizations: Shell, Sheriff’s Locations: Tennessee, Murfreesboro, Tenn, Tennessee Lottery’s, Nashville, Rutherford