Judge Tosses $750K Scratcher Suit, Slaps Player With $153,200 Bill

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has signed a judgment in favor of the California State Lottery Commission, closing out a years-long dispute over a $750,000 poker scratcher ticket that the state says had been torn apart and taped back together. The player, James Densley, claimed he'd been cheated out of the money after buying the ticket in September 2021. Instead, he now owes the lottery more than $150,000 in attorneys' fees and costs.

Judge Kevin C. Brazile granted the Attorney General's Office's motion to dismiss Densley's suit and ordered him to pay $153,200 in fees and costs, according to court papers cited by MyNewsLA.com. The judgment formally disposes of the breach-of-contract lawsuit Densley filed against the California State Lottery Commission back in April 2022.

A Flush Versus a Torn Ticket

Densley's case centered on a Scratchers game built around poker hands, where a winning combination like a flush pays out over a lesser hand such as three queens. He said the ticket he bought revealed a flush, and that he was entitled to the top prize tied to that outcome. According to the same court record, Densley claimed the lottery commission denied him the payout three months after he bought the ticket.

The state told a very different story. The Attorney General's Office contended that the original ticket had been torn into pieces and reassembled with cellophane tape, and further argued that the ticket had been rearranged to create a winning hand rather than reflecting the outcome as originally printed. Those are the two competing accounts in the case file, and the court sided with the state's version when it dismissed the suit.

Why California Won't Pay on Altered Tickets

California law gives the lottery commission firm legal ground to refuse payment in cases like this. Under Government Code Section 8880.321(b), the state lottery is barred from paying prizes on tickets that are altered, counterfeit, unreadable, or otherwise missing required play symbol captions, per court and statutory records cited by Justia Law. That statute effectively treats physical ticket integrity as a bright-line requirement rather than something open to negotiation in a breach-of-contract claim.

The stakes for tampering with a ticket can go well beyond losing a civil suit. Attempting to fraudulently claim a lottery prize over $950 using an altered ticket can be prosecuted in California as felony grand theft or forgery, carrying prison sentences of up to three years, according to All-Pro Bail Bonds. That exposure isn't theoretical: in September 2018, a Southern California man was convicted of felony perjury after presenting a torn Powerball ticket reassembled with tape in an attempt to falsely collect a $435 million jackpot, according to the California Statewide Law Enforcement Association.

Part of a Pattern in LA Courts

Densley's case wasn't argued alone for long. In July 2024, his attorney, Mark Quigley, filed a motion in Los Angeles Superior Court seeking to be relieved as legal counsel in the matter, a procedural shift that came well before this month's final judgment. The case had been docketed under case number 22STCV31274 in Los Angeles Superior Court.

The outcome fits a broader pattern of Los Angeles Superior Court rulings against unverified or physically compromised lottery claims. In January, Judge Rolf M. Treu dismissed a separate breach-of-contract lawsuit brought by Faramarz Lahijani against the California Lottery, who had sought $197 million over a lost second matching Mega Millions ticket, according to MyNewsLA.com. And in May 2025, the state Attorney General's Office moved to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Stacy Tru, who claimed entitlement to a $1.08 billion Powerball jackpot without ever producing a copy of the winning ticket, per KESQ.

The Scratchers Game and the Bigger Picture

The poker-themed Scratchers ticket at the center of Densley's suit involved a winning hand valued at $75,000 multiplied by 10. The lottery has continued to lean into poker-style games since; in March 2025, it launched Joker's Wild Poker, a $10 Scratchers title with top prizes of $750,000 and overall winning odds of 1 in 3.43, according to ScratchSmarter.

California's lottery runs on a pari-mutuel system, meaning payout amounts for many prize tiers fluctuate based on ticket sales and the total number of winners rather than sitting at a fixed cash value, as Hoodline has previously reported. The lottery has generated more than $48 billion for California public schools since it launched in 1985, funds that are constitutionally earmarked for education. Cases like Densley's, alongside the Lahijani and Tru disputes, underscore how aggressively the state defends that revenue stream whenever a claim hinges on a ticket that can't be verified in its original, unaltered form.