An Arizona man who used to work at a local Circle K lost his job after he bought a winning lottery ticket left behind by a customer — but his attorney says he was just following the rules of the store.
In November 2025, Robert Gawlitza was employed as a manager at the Circle K in Scottsdale, Arizona, when a customer — who was also an employee of the store, according to the company — bought $60 worth of lottery tickets. Gawlitza’s co-worker, Marline Ybarra, had printed out $85 worth of tickets, some of which had apparently fallen behind the printer. According to court filings reviewed by Law&Crime, the store had a policy that employees had to dole out the cash for any lottery tickets left behind by customers as a penalty for accidentally printing them out.
According to a complaint filed by Circle K, Gawlitza paid for a portion of the extra tickets after learning that one of them was a winner — to the tune of $12.8 million — when he arrived for work on Nov. 25, 2025…