Money Moral Dilemma. Would you keep the lottery ticket?

jetfighter

If there was any possible chance of me catching up with her, I would chase after her and hand her the ticket. I'm a dizzy sod myself and tend to lose things :rolleyes: so would sympathise with her! I would also hope someone else would do the same for me (though to be honest, wouldn't expect it to happen).

If she had gone and there was no way of catching her, I would phone the National Lottery helpline and ask their advice. Though to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if the person on the other end of the phone asked me to send it in, and how would I know if they weren't giving me instructions to send it directly into their hands... :rolleyes:

I definitely couldn't bring myself to cash in the money, unless explicitly told to, and even then I'd feel horrendously guilty.

LAURA1979_2

you would never have any luck with the money!:money:

euchrid

Depends:-
If the woman were clearly "well to do" - highly groomed, wearing designer label clothing, driving a swanky car (convertable, 4x4, etc.), obviously an executive type person, exhibiting a haughty 'up herself' demeanour, etc. then YES, I would pocket it. Finders keepers right?
She is already a 'have' - time for one of us 'have nots' to get a look in.

If the woman were a tracksuited 'chavette' then again, YES.
She'd only waste the money on Red Bull, fags and 18-30 holidays.

If she is an average woman in the street - a working mum or grandmother, then obviously NO - I would do my Knight-in-Shining-Armour bit and hope that a bit of her luck rubs off on me.

violasophie

If she was easy to find i would definitely give it back. If not, I would see how much it was for and if it was a large amount (probably anything over about £200) I would try harder to track her down, but if I couldn't i would keep the ticket and prize money.

Cloudane

No, I'd give it back. Even if it's the top prize. No use being rich if you can't live with yourself. If she was already gone, then it's off to the police station with it.

Wouldn't insist on a reward either, seeing the relief on her face would be reward enough. But of course you never know where it'd lead, maybe I'd end up with a rich new friend

There are of course exceptions, such as if she was a scumbag who had already done something equally nasty to someone else.

Hoodsfanx

Won on 5 numbers plus the bonus about a year after the lottery started, but couldn't find the ticket. Someone else must have claimed the prize, because we checked some considerable time afterwards to see if there were any unclaimed prizes - there weren't.
A bad deal at the time - but now we just laugh!

diane1706

give it back. I like to sleep on a night and wouldn't if I felt guilty.

mlegg

Of course I would rush after her and see the delighted look on her face! If I lost my ticket I would hope someone would be honest too, after all, it should not be 'finders keepers'! I become very disheartened when I hear of people taking advantage of someone else's misfortune. :heartsmil

JimmyTheWig

I find the scenario a little hard to believe. It suggests to me that it's a small prize (that she wasn't keeping safe), or even that this is a different ticket to the winning one.

The fact that she's got a mobile signal suggests it's a list in an open area (e.g. internal shopping centre lift) rather than, say, the multi-storey car park of the shopping centre.
So was there really time for her to drop the ticket, realise she hasn't got it, look for it, get her phone and have enough of a conversation to establish what we know?
I think she lost the ticket elsewhere and so phones her husband to say she's lost it and in the process discards another ticket.

Can you _then_ imagine how bad you would feel, chasing this woman half-way around the shopping centre and telling her you'd found her lost ticket only for her to discover you'd found her discarded ticket!

Or maybe she was already on the phone and discovered she'd lost the ticket? Maybe she dropped the ticket when she got her phone out.
In which case she deserves everything she gets for talking on the phone in a lift - we don't all want to hear her news...

dipsy

sjh1008 wrote: »

I'd find her if I could easily, but wouldn't cash the ticket in any case. I know this is a hypothetical case, but if we're talking about the National Lottery, a lost ticket can be reported by the original purchaser as long as they do it quickly (within a month I think) and can remember where / when they got the ticket, etc, and claim the prize even without the original.

are you stating this as a fact you know?

The reason I question, is that my son once threw a lottery ticket on an open fire along with some rubbish, ..... I rang the lottery help line told them the exact time of purchase within secounds of the purchase as I had a receipt as bought other bits, along with store name and a couple of the numbers I remembered off the ticket.

All they could say was that it wasn't a jackpot winner as the couple of numbers I remembered didn't come up.... however it could have been a £10 or somewhere in between and they didn't do anything...

So if this is fact I would be interested to know where it is published incase my son ever does a repeat :-)