Nebraska’s $300K Lottery Winner Seeks to Quash ‘Fraudulent’ Ticket Felony

• Lottery win sparks legal battle over unpaid scratch-off.
• Security footage allegedly shows ticket taken without payment.
• Attorney argues case lacks sufficient probable cause evidence.
  

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A gas station manager from Nebraska who won $300k on a lottery scratch-off, allegedly before he paid for the ticket, wants his case dismissed for lack of evidence.

Jeremiah Ehlers, from Greeley, Neb., is facing a felony theft by deception charge for fraudulently claiming a lottery prize in April 2024.

His Diamond Dollars ticket win was initially celebrated by the Nebraska Lottery, and Ehlers was pictured grinning with the obligatory outsized novelty check.

Red Flags

But jackpot-winning gas station employees tend to raise red flags with lottery officials because of their direct access to unsold scratch-off tickets. There have also been instances of store employees scanning a customer’s ticket and seeing that it’s a winner, informing the customer it isn’t, and later fishing it out of the trash.

The win certainly raised a red flag with the district manager of Rapid Stop, who at the time of the jackpot win already suspected Ehlers had been stealing lottery tickets since October 2023 from the Greeley branch where he worked.

The law in Nebraska states that all tickets must be paid for before they are played. Prosecutors say Ehlers had the process back to front.

Ehlers claimed the prize on April 23, 2024, walking away with $213K after tax, and was fired from his job a week later.

Ehlers Arrested

Ehlers was arrested in January 2025. Authorities seized nearly $129K from his bank accounts, but he had already spent around $84,000 on vehicles, including a 2019 Dodge Ram, home repairs, and personal debts, per court filings. On May 28, a judge ruled there was enough evidence for the case to proceed to district court.

But according to his lawyer, none of this stacks up. The attorney filed a motion in Lancaster County District Court this week arguing the evidence presented at the preliminary hearing was insufficient and failed to establish probable cause. The motion asks the court to dismiss the charge entirely.

A hearing on that motion is scheduled for July 29. Until then, Ehlers’ $300K win – or what’s left of it – remains frozen in legal limbo.