Jeanine McFarland (Photo courtesy of Baxter County Sheriff’s Office)
A local convenience store employee is accused of stealing funds from the business through the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery games. Forty-seven-year-old Jeanine McFarland of Viola was booked into the Baxter County Detention Center Friday morning and released less than an hour later on a $5,000 bond.
According to the probable cause affidavit, the owner of a Henderson convenience store filed an incident report with the Baxter County Sheriff’s Office March 2 claiming one of his employees was stealing funds from his store through the lottery games it sells. The owner stated McFarland was an employee of his, but he fired her the previous day. Through audits with the Arkansas Lottery Commission, the owner alleges the store lost over $15,000 from McFarland’s transactions with the lottery games between Dec. 1 and Feb. 28.
Authorities reviewed surveillance footage from the store. McFarland would allegedly play the games and not pay for them. She would scan the winning tickets, giving the store the credit for the winnings by not removing money from the register in some instances, but the winning tickets failed to match the costs of the games being played.
McFarland is facing felony counts of lottery fraud and theft of property.
WebReadyTM Powered by WireReady® NSI