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Appeal denied in lottery scam
An appeal by one of three persons involved in a $2 million lottery scam with Putnam County connections uncovered in 2015 has been denied by the Indiana Court of Appeals.
Jackie Harold Parsley II, 39, Plainfield, had filed an appeal of his 2015 conviction after he and others falsely claimed a jackpot-winning Hoosier Lottery ticket they had taken illegally from a Plainfield liquor store.
Parsley’s accomplices in the case were Ashlee Campbell-Parsley, 34, and her husband, Joseph Parsley, 36, Indianapolis.
Campbell-Parsley told Lottery officials she bought the ticket from Parsley’s Liquor Store in Plainfield, which was her husband’s family business. The liquor store was up for sale at the time of the incident.
However, Indiana law prohibits a retailer or employee of the retailer from purchasing lottery tickets at the premises where the retailer is authorized to sell tickets.
The pay-out on their winnings was $1,139,948. Among purchases made with their ill-gotten gain, the Parsleys bought a home at Heritage Lake in Putnam County where two of the defendants were arrested in April 2015.
Insufficient evidence and the state’s failure to prove he had the mental culpability to commit the offense for which he was convicted were the crux of Jackie Parsley’s appeal claim.
However, the Court of Appeals disagreed, denying the appeal and ruling sufficient evidence supported Parsley’s convictions for the false passing of a lottery ticket, a Level 5 felony; theft, a Level 5 felony; and five counts of money laundering, a Level 6 felony.
Appeals Court Senior Judge John Sharpnack, in his opinion, wrote that “ample circumstantial evidence (exists) that Parsley chose to conceal pack 57013 rather than return it to the Lottery.”
The judge noted that the defendant worked with Ashlee and Joseph Parsley to claim the $2 million prize ticket “because he knew he could not have done so himself.”
“Without Parsley, Ashlee and Joseph would not have had access to the winning ticket,” Sharpnack advised.
A joint investigation between the Hoosier Lottery Security Division and the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office was initiated in November 2014 when an estate executor for the late owner of Parsley’s Liquor reported his suspicions. The Plainfield store has since been sold and now operates under a new name and owners.
Parsley’s Liquor was an authorized Hoosier Lottery retailer at one time, but its license was not renewed in 2014. The scratch-off ticket dispensers had been removed, and the lottery terminal was deactivated.
When the estate executor learned that a winning lottery ticket had been sold from the business, he researched the information and found Ashlee Campbell -- known to him as the fiancée of Joseph Parsley -- had claimed the jackpot of a “100X The Cash” scratch-off game which had a top prize of $2 million.
The investigation determined that on Sept. 26, 2014, a pack of Hoosier Lottery scratch-off tickets, containing one of the game’s top prizes, was activated by Jackie Parsley II at Parsley’s Liquor on the store’s newly reactivated terminal.
Between Sept. 26 and Oct. 5, 2014 seven tickets from the same pack were redeemed for amounts ranging between $20 and $50 at other Hoosier Lottery retailers. On Oct. 3, 2014, Ashlee Campbell redeemed the ticket with the top prize of $2 million. Video surveillance, viewed with the assistance of the U.S. Secret Service computer forensic examination unit, confirmed the timeline of events.
A separate civil forfeiture action was later initiated on cash and property purchased with the fraudulently claimed lottery winnings. A house at Heritage Lake, four vehicles and approximately $620,000 from two bank accounts were seized during the investigation.