A store manager who discovered that it matched all six winning numbers decided to buy it himself after clocking out, removing his uniform and paying $10. The ticket was worth nearly $12.8 million.
Now, nearly a year after the drawing, a judge has allowed the dispute to move forward, according to a report by NBC Palm Springs, although the question of who gets the money remains unanswered. A customer walked into a convenience store in Arizona to buy lottery tickets, ran short of cash and left some of them behind. By the next morning, one of those unpaid tickets had become a multimillion-dollar mystery. But instead of collecting a fortune, the employee found himself in a legal battle with his former employer, Circle K, over who actually owned the winning slip.
The incident began on November 24, 2025, when a customer asked a store employee to print $85 worth of lottery tickets, according to court filings. She paid $60 but did not have enough money to cover the remaining $25 worth. In February 2026, the convenience store chain filed a lawsuit in Maricopa County Superior Court, asking a judge to determine who legally owns the winning ticket and is entitled to the prize.
He then clocked out, removed his uniform and asked another employee, Marline Ybarra, to ring up the purchase, according to Circle K’s lawsuit. The company has said the lawsuit is intended to clarify ownership rather than target a particular employee. When Gawlitza arrived for work the following morning, he learnt that a winning ticket had been printed at his store. He checked the remaining tickets and discovered that one was the jackpot winner. Circle K, however, has a different interpretation of what happened. The company argues that the tickets were printed at its store but never validly sold to the customer or the manager. It has cited Arizona Lottery administrative rules that give retailers ownership of tickets that are overprinted or remain unsold. There is another complication: the original customer, identified in court documents as Kim, has also emerged as a potential claimant. The central question is whether she abandoned the unpaid tickets or merely left them behind after being unable to pay for the full order. That distinction could prove important in determining whether she retained any claim to the winning ticket.
A judge previously extended the deadline for claiming the jackpot, which would otherwise have expired under the lottery’s usual 180-day rule. The latest development came on November 6, when Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Joseph Kreamer ruled that the legal case could proceed. The Arizona Lottery has been holding the prize while the legal dispute plays out. However, he narrowed the immediate proceedings to the question of who owns the winning ticket. Most of the other claims, including those connected to the former manager’s employment dispute, have been put on hold until the ownership issue is resolved.