An employee of a Boardman grocery store is behind bars after police say she stole at least $9,600 from her employer by redeeming fake lottery tickets.

According to a police report, police were called to the Save A Lot store on Boardman-Canfield Road in early January in reference to a theft by an employee.

Police spoke with the store manager as well as an Ohio Lottery sales representative who told officers when looking at the company's financial report, financial irregularities were discovered with one employee, identified as 51-year-old Tonya Payne cashing out an unusual amount of winning lottery tickets.

Police say further audit revealed that these lottery tickets didn't actually exist and Payne had been ringing up these non-existent tickets to make it appear as if her register was full at the end of each day.

According to the report, when management confronted Payne about this, she admitted to using the lottery redeem key to subtract from her register estimating that she had stolen between $2,000 and $3,000.

However, police say the audit revealed at least $9,600 was stolen by Payne via fraudulent transactions.

Police were not able to speak with Payne at the time because she was not on scene, but her employer told officers they wanted to pursue theft charges against her.

It wasn't until Thursday, April 4 that Payne was arrested on a warrant. She's currently in the Mahoning County Jail and is charged with one count of theft.