FORT DODGE – A Fort Dodge man is charged with two counts of first-degree theft and one count of lottery fraud following an investigation by the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation and Iowa Lottery.
The Webster County Attorney’s Office filed the three felony charges against Christopher A. Breyfogle, who was arrested by DCI and Ft. Dodge Police on Monday, July 31, and made an initial court appearance Tuesday in Webster County Magistrate Court.
According to criminal complaints in the case:
The lottery requested in August 2016 that the DCI open the criminal investigation that led to the charges against Breyfogle after determining that lottery scratch tickets were missing from a Fort Dodge convenience store. Breyfogle worked at the store as an assistant manager and in his job duties, had access to lottery scratch tickets that had been delivered to the store but were not yet on display for sale.
An Iowa Lottery employee saw Breyfogle scanning and redeeming numerous scratch tickets at another retail location in Fort Dodge and found that suspicious. The lottery then contacted the convenience store where he worked and in conjunction with the store, determined that tickets were missing from its inventory.
During Breyfogle’s employment at the convenience store at 115 N. 22nd St. in Fort Dodge, the location was owned by two different companies: Kum & Go and Yesway. The store was sold by Kum & Go to Yesway in July 2016. The lottery determined that entire packs of scratch tickets were missing from the location in June, July and August 2016, and that Breyfogle had gone to other retail locations to scan all of the tickets from those packs.
More than $20,000 in scratch tickets were missing from the convenience store and Breyfogle claimed more than $11,000 in prizes at other locations in central Iowa from those tickets. State investigators obtained surveillance-camera video showing Breyfogle scanning and redeeming tickets missing from the store where he worked.
