What should have been a life-changing lottery story has turned into a legal mess, and reporter Kyle Simchuk’s 12 News video lays out why people in Arizona are now watching one of the strangest jackpot disputes in years.
Simchuk reported that a lottery ticket worth $12.8 million is currently sitting unsigned and unclaimed in a corporate office, while lawyers fight over who actually owns it.
That number alone would make headlines.
But the details in Simchuk’s report are what make this case so unusual, because the person accused of buying the ticket is not a random customer who got lucky at the counter.
According to the lawsuit described by 12 News, the ticket was bought by a Circle K store manager the day after the drawing, after he had already learned a winning ticket had been printed at his store and after he allegedly confirmed which ticket it was.
That is the part that changes everything.
As 12 News anchors Mark Curtis and Caribe Devine framed it at the top of the segment, the issue is not simply a winning ticket, but whether the manager reportedly knew it was a winner before buying it.
And once that question enters the story, it stops being a fun lottery story and becomes a courtroom story.
How the Winning Ticket Was Left Behind
In his report outside the Circle K in North Scottsdale, Kyle Simchuk said the case began with what sounded like a routine lottery purchase.
According to Simchuk, a customer came into the Circle K at Bell Road and 56th Street on November 24 and asked to replay lucky numbers for “The Pick,” an Arizona Lottery game.
The cashier printed $85 worth of tickets, Simchuk reported, but the customer only paid for $60 worth and left.
That meant some tickets stayed behind on the counter.
At that point, this could have been a forgettable store moment, the kind of thing that happens every day in retail, with abandoned slips, change left behind, or purchases that never get completed.
Instead, Simchuk said, one of those leftover tickets ended up matching all six numbers in that night’s drawing.
Not just a small winner, either.
As he put it in the video, it was “not just a winner – the winner,” a jackpot ticket worth $12.8 million.
That twist is almost hard to believe on its own, and it explains why the anchors reacted on air by calling the story bizarre even before getting to the legal details.
It is already an unusual situation when a jackpot ticket is printed but not purchased by the original customer.
What happened next, according to the complaint Simchuk summarized, is what pushed this into lawsuit territory.
What the Lawsuit Says the Manager Did Next
Simchuk identified the store manager as Robert Gawlitza and said that when he came in the next morning to start his shift, he allegedly learned that a winning ticket had been printed at that Circle K the night before.
According to the complaint described in the 12 News report, Gawlitza then found the leftover tickets and checked them.
Simchuk said the lawsuit claims he confirmed that one of those tickets matched all six winning numbers.
That is the key moment in this entire dispute.
If the allegations are accurate, then this was not someone unknowingly buying a leftover ticket from a batch and later discovering it was a winner. The lawsuit, as Simchuk explained it, says the manager knew what he was buying before he paid for it.
And the next steps described in the complaint only deepened that concern.
Simchuk reported that Gawlitza allegedly clocked out, took off his Circle K uniform, then came back in “as a customer” and paid $10 for the remaining tickets, including the jackpot winner he had already identified.
That detail about clocking out and removing the uniform is one of the reasons this case has grabbed so much attention.
Even the 12 News anchors remarked on that part after the package aired, with one noting how bizarre it sounded and pointing specifically to “the taking off of the uniform and the whole thing.”
It reads like a scene from a movie, but Simchuk’s report makes clear this is now a legal allegation in a real lawsuit, not a viral rumor.
He also reported that Gawlitza signed the back of the ticket but never cashed it.
And that is where Circle K stepped in.
Why Circle K Took the Ticket and Went to Court
According to Kyle Simchuk, Circle K learned what had happened and intervened before the prize was claimed.
He reported that the company took the ticket to corporate headquarters, where it remains.
That move appears to have frozen the situation before the money changed hands, and it likely prevented an even larger fight later if the ticket had already been cashed out and distributed.
Now Circle K is suing both Gawlitza and the Arizona Lottery, according to Simchuk, and asking the court to decide who legally owns the ticket and the jackpot proceeds.
That part is important because, at least as Simchuk presented it, Circle K is not just fighting a worker. The company wants a formal ruling that settles the rights to the ticket itself.
Simchuk said the complaint points to Arizona lottery rules that may control what happens next.
According to the lawsuit summary in the report, if a ticket is printed, refused by a customer, and not resold, the retailer may be considered the owner of that ticket under Arizona lottery rules.
If that interpretation holds, Circle K may have a claim.
But the case clearly is not simple, because if it were, there likely would not be a lawsuit involving the employee, the retailer, and the lottery agency at the same time.
This is where the story becomes more than a workplace controversy.
It turns into a legal question about ownership, procedure, and whether knowing a ticket is a winner before buying it changes everything, even if money later changes hands at the register.
That issue is fascinating because it sits at the intersection of lottery law and common sense.
Most people hearing this story probably have the same first reaction: if the manager knew it was the winner before buying it, that feels wrong. But courts do not decide cases on gut feelings alone, and that is exactly why Simchuk said lawyers are now trying to sort out who the ticket actually belongs to.
The Clock Is Ticking Toward a Hard Deadline
One of the most dramatic parts of Simchuk’s report is that this dispute cannot drag on forever. He said all parties have until May 23 to get this resolved because that is when the ticket expires.
After that, Simchuk noted, the $12.8 million ticket becomes a worthless piece of paper. That looming deadline adds real pressure to the legal fight.
It is one thing to argue over ownership in court. It is another to do it while a multimillion-dollar asset is losing value by the day if no one can legally claim it in time.
The deadline also raises the stakes for every side involved.
Circle K has to protect what it believes may be a valid claim. The employee, if he intends to assert ownership, cannot simply wait and hope the issue fades. And the Arizona Lottery is pulled into a dispute it likely never wanted because someone eventually needs to know who, if anyone, gets paid.
From a reporting standpoint, Simchuk did a good job making that deadline feel concrete instead of abstract.
It is not just a future court date.
It is a countdown to whether one of the largest lottery prizes in recent Arizona memory gets awarded at all.
And that possibility – a winning jackpot ticket going dead while everyone argues – is part of what makes this story so compelling.
Why This Case Feels So Strange Even by Lottery Standards
Lottery stories are usually built around luck, excitement, and surprise.
This one, as told in Kyle Simchuk’s 12 News report, is built around timing, knowledge, and conduct.
The strange part is not only that a winning ticket was left behind. It is the sequence that followed: a manager allegedly learns a winner was printed at his store, identifies the ticket, changes his role from employee to “customer,” buys it for $10, signs it, and then gets stopped before cashing in.
That sequence raises obvious trust questions, especially in a business that depends on customers believing the process is fair.
Even if a court eventually decides who owns this ticket, the facts alleged in the complaint could still leave people uneasy about how leftover lottery tickets are handled inside stores and what internal controls exist when employees know a winning ticket came from their location.
The anchors at 12 News sounded genuinely stunned by the story, and honestly, that reaction felt appropriate.
It is rare to hear a case where a jackpot ticket is not disputed because of a missing signature, a family fight, or a lost slip, but because of what happened in the store after the drawing, and after someone allegedly knew exactly what was in that stack.
Simchuk’s reporting leaves viewers with the core question at the heart of the lawsuit: was this a lawful purchase of abandoned tickets, or was it an improper attempt to capture a jackpot that the buyer knew was already sitting in front of him?
That is now for the courts to decide.
Until then, the ticket remains in corporate custody, the jackpot remains unpaid, and one of Arizona’s strangest lottery fights keeps getting stranger the longer it sits unresolved.
A former park ranger and wildlife conservationist, Lisa’s passion for survival started with her deep connection to nature. Raised on a small farm in northern Wisconsin, she learned how to grow her own food, raise livestock, and live off the land. Lisa is our dedicated Second Amendment news writer and also focuses on homesteading, natural remedies, and survival strategies. Lisa aims to help others live more sustainably and prepare for the unexpected.
