Man accused of theft after telling elderly woman she won lottery, had to pay him taxes

Robert Cornell, 81, is charged with theft.

  HOUSTON (KTRK) -- A man living at a southwest Houston retirement home is accused of stealing money from an elderly woman after he reportedly convinced her that she had won a prize.

Robert Cornell, 81, is charged with theft. According to court documents, on September 29 , 2011, Cornell called a 92-year-old woman and told her she had won a lottery. But before she could collect her prize money, Cornell reportedly convinced her that she had to pay the taxes.

The woman complied, sending checks for $5,000 and $3,400 to Cornell's mailing address. Those checks were cashed at a southwest Houston Wells Fargo bank.

Investigators say the woman received more calls asking for more money. The victim, who had never received a prize, became suspicious and called police.

Through an investigation, police were able to identify Cornell, who lives at a retirement home. They say his driver's license photo matches bank photos of the man who cashed the victim's checks. Tellers were also able to identify him from his driver's license photo.

Bail in the case is set at $5,000.

(Copyright ©2012 KTRK-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)
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Elderly man accused of running cross-state lottery scam

  HOUSTON (KTRK) -- A man living in a southwest Houston retirement home is accused of running a lottery scam against a fellow senior citizen in California.

Robert W. Cornell, 81, is charged with theft from the elderly.

According to court documents, Cornell called his victim -- an elderly woman in Sacramento, California -- in September and gave her a false name. He told her she had won the lottery but she needed to pay taxes on the winnings before the prize could be awarded.

The victim followed her caller's directions and mailed two checks for $5,000 and $3,400 to Robert Cornell at his address on Jason Street in Houston, officials said. The checks were then cashed at a Wells Fargo Bank on S. Gessner.

Investigators said the victim continued getting phone calls asking for more money, but she never received the prize money. She realized she was being scammed and called Sacramento police.

A detective in Sacramento contacted the Houston Police Department for assistance. HPD confirmed that Cornell lived at the address on Jason St. and that the address was a retirement home with locked mail boxes and restricted building access.

Houston police also looked at surveillance footage from the Wells Fargo where the checks were cashed and were able to identify Cornell, records state.

Cornell has not been arrested. It was unclear Friday if the woman in California was his only alleged victim.

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How much of your lottery ticket is helping education?

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- With Texas schools facing billions of dollars in cuts, everyone is looking for more money. And we get asked all the time, what about the lottery? Isn't the lottery supposed to support Texas schools?

Texas law says lottery proceeds are supposed to go toward education. Since 1998, the lottery's given about a billion dollars to Texas schools every year. It's a lot of money, but it hasn't gone up a dime even when lottery sales have doubled. Linda Neighbors is pretty serious about her scratch offs. She plays every other day and spends about $50 or $60 a week, and every once in a while she hits. "Fifty-dollars so far," Neighbors said. Like a lot of Texans, Neighbors believes her lotto spending is helping Texas schools. And this Katy great-grandmother has a lot of reasons to help Texas schools. The Texas lottery has helped Texas classrooms; it's given $13 billion to education since 1997 -- about a billion dollars a year. But today, Texans are buying twice as many lottery tickets as they did that first year, and the lottery isn't given a dime more. "Pooey, pooey, pooey," Neighbors said. Dawn Nettles, a self-appointed Texas lottery watchdog, puts it a different way. "They need to pay what they have in their budget to pay," Nettles said. Nettles runs lottoreport.com, where she's traced every winner, every jackpot and every decrease in the percentage of lottery money that ends up in Texas classrooms. She says the lottery is just giving away too much money -- more money than it can afford and that hurts your kids. "They claim they're taking money from their operating account to fund these over-payments, but I suspect it's really coming from the schools," Nettles said. The first thing the lottery pays is prizes, and 62 percent of lottery money pays off winners. Then the lottery pays itself to run the games.. That's 10 percent of the money. And whatever's left in the bucket goes to the education fund. Today it's just 27 percent of lottery budget, but when it started, it was 10 percent higher. "Isn't there some argument that when you offer bigger prizes, players win but schools lose?" we said to Bobby Heith with the Texas Lottery Commission. "Well, you could look at it that way," he replied. But as you can imagine the Texas Lottery Commission doesn't see it that way. "Why do you have to offer so much money?" we asked Heith. "To get players to buy tickets," he said. The lottery says research and history show when prize percentages go down, sales suffer and so does the lottery bottom line. Winners want big prizes. The last time lawmakers forced the lottery to cut prizes was 14 years ago. With no other legal gambling option in Texas, Neighbors says she might be willing to help classrooms a little more. She'd even play if the prizes weren't as big. "Probably, I am an inveterate gambler," she said. We checked. If the lottery had kept its 37 percent donation to schools, it would have given Texas schools $3.4 billion more since 1998. It's money that now has gone to lottery winners. (Copyright ©2011 KTRK-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)
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