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He won $3 million, but his luck ended there.
An illegal immigrant was scammed out of a massive lottery jackpot by the man who ran the Rockland County store where the victim bought his winning scratch-off ticket, prosecutors said yesterday.
The alleged lottery crook told the winner that illegal aliens can’t claim lottery prizes — and that if the victim tried to collect his $3 million in winnings, he would be deported.
The claims were false; anyone can claim a lottery prize. But the lies scared the victim so much that he agreed to let the alleged scammer, a clerk at the A-Z Deli and Convenience store in Spring Valley, sign the ticket as a co-winner, officials said.
The alleged lottery larcenist, Atif Ali, 28, also got the store’s former owner, Riaz Khan, 45, and his pal Mubeen Ashraf, 23, in on the scam, the Rockland County DA’s Office said.
The worried victim, a 40-year-old painter from Guatemala who won last February, let the three men submit the ticket to the New York Lottery.
They told him they would claim the prize and then hand most of the money over to him.
“They said, ‘We’ll take your ticket, and we’ll cash it in, and we’ll share it with you,’ ” said DA Thomas Zugibe. “And then they kept the money.”
Ali and his cohorts allegedly received the first $150,000 annuity payment on the prize. They then got a $600,000 advance on the rest of the money and wound up keeping $500,000 of the victim’s lottery cash, after taxes.
The victim, whose name was not released, didn’t see a dime of his winnings. He eventually realized something was wrong and went to a lawyer, who told cops.
“He was afraid of what Atif Ali and the others claimed would happen,” the victim’s attorney, Thomas Sassone said.
The rest of his winnings, which came from the $3 Million Richer instant game, have been frozen while the case goes to court.
The three suspects are each being held in jail on one count of grand larceny.
Sassone said the victim, a dad of one, is now in line for a U-visa as a crime victim.
“He says the money is very important and it’s been hard for him living in the shadows for years as an illegal immigrant,” Sassone said.