Former waitress sentenced to 2 1/2 to 5 years in prison in $50,000 lottery scheme

Apr. 26—She was working as a waitress in a Hamburg restaurant when she took gaming tickets and placed fraudulent bets on Quick Draw, Mega Millions and Powerball while placing bets for customers.

The waitress, Danielle K. Bush, got caught after the restaurant owner conducted an internal audit of billing statements from the New York Lottery that uncovered "abnormally high gaming activity, unusual betting amounts and unique betting patterns," prosecutors said, all of which corresponded with Bush's work schedule. The scheme cost the restaurant $50,000. Bush was fired and later arrested.

On Tuesday, Bush, 31, of the Town of Tonawanda, who also has a previous address in Orchard Park, was sentenced by Erie County Judge Kenneth Case to two and a half to five years in prison.

When she was arrested on the ticket scheme, records show Bush was already on probation for another crime.

In June 2019, she pleaded guilty to a felony count of first-degree scheme to defraud and a misdemeanor count of petit larceny. She admitted to filing fictitious reimbursement claims to insurance companies, claiming that her vehicle had been damaged in a construction zone. She fraudulently obtained about $12,890 from insurance companies. She was sentenced in August 2019 to five years of probation and ordered to pay full restitution.

Bush pleaded guilty last summer to a felony count of third-degree grand larceny in the Hamburg restaurant case.

She was free awaiting sentencing when she allegedly submitted through her lawyer a phony medical record that purported to show she had been diagnosed with cancer.

Bush was charged with a new crime — a felony count of first-degree offering a false instrument for filing. Case ordered her remanded to jail.

Erie County District Attorney John Flynn said in a statement about the sentencing that the DA's office agreed to drop the false instrument charge "in exchange for the Court to impose a lengthier sentence of imprisonment on the grand larceny conviction."

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