This is a classic tactic cause you can scan them without scratching them at the store and filter out any actual winners and just leave people with essentially nothing.
When I worked as a cashier there was a real estate agent who bought scratchers all the time and did exactly this. If one of them won more than like 50 bucks he cashed it and took all the worthless/low value ones. Then all his clients would get them in the mail for Xmas.
What? That’s not how a lottery ticket machine works. Part of the front has to be scratched off to determine if it is a winner, even with the machine. I know, because I remember having to scratch this part off myself for customers redeeming tickets back when I sold them. (The part the machine needed was along the edge, and many didn’t scratch there.) (This is specific to Tennessee, but I doubt any state used a system where you can tell if it’s a winner without anything being scratched.)
Was this a decade or two ago? There was a mathematician that figured out how to separate winners and losers without scratching them off back in 2003. But I suspect tickets have gotten more sophisticated since then.
Anyways, I trust my manager isn’t doing anything sketchy. She’s generally awesome.