The Missouri Lottery Commission says the bad news is, in this case, it's tough to tell which Lotto tickets were stolen and which were purchased because it happened gradually and took a while for the store manager to catch on. So the thief could take winning tickets up to any convenience store counter and cash in.

If you want to play the lottery in Houston, the Bull's Eye on the main drag is a prime location.

"I'd say there are at least 1,000 tickets of various amounts missing,” said Houston Police Officer Brad Evans.

Amy Crump is the manager.

"They stole from all of us that work here, not only the owners but they stole from all of us,” said Crump.

Crump says all the stolen tickets were Scratcher tickets, which cost law abiding citizens anywhere from $1 to $20 to buy. When you're not paying for them, it's solid profit.

"They were locked up in a filing cabinet that you could pull the drawer open, but we didn't know that until later,” said Crump.

The stealing went on for about a month and a half until Crump was tipped off. She says she found out about this initially because a friend of hers who works up the road noticed an employee from the Bull’s Eye who kept coming in and cashing in on Scratchers, and she finally got suspicious.

"I went and got them and started checking the numbers and they were some of the tickets that were missing from this store,” said Cump.

Houston police have a pretty good idea of who the thieves are by seeing which employees agreed to a lie detector test.

"A lot of times they won't take the polygraph if they were involved because they believe they could be incriminated in that way,” said Evans.

Of course, not taking a polygraph test doesn't mean you're guilty but it raises initial questions for investigators. Police say they have one or two “persons of interest” on whom they’re focusing. Other than that, they can't say anything else about the investigation.