Mundakayam: A lottery seller here fell victim to a fraud as a person changed the numbers of some lottery tickets and stole money from her. Kalarikal Omana, who sells lottery tickets in Mundakayam town, was defrauded in this manner.

The incident happened on Monday. A young man approached Omana under the guise of purchasing a ticket and asked her for the winning ticket number of the previous day. He then corrected the number on some tickets using a pencil and showed them to Omana. He had four tickets with the winning prize of Rs 500 each.

After making her believe him, the man bought four tickets worth Rs 1,300 in lieu of the winning prize. As Omana did not have change, she paid Rs 1,000 instead of Rs 700 balance. When the young man failed to return after promising to pay the remaining Rs 300 by getting change from elsewhere, Omana became suspicious. That is when she discovered that the ticket numbers had been altered using a pencil.  She then lodged a complaint with the Mundakayam Police.