If you found a winning lottery ticket - would you cash it in?

[Hulababy]

This couple did

What would you have done - honestly?

How did the other person prove she was the real winner?

Personally I'd assume that there was no way to find the owner of the ticket (until now, I suppose), so why not cash it in?

I would have been very tempted to keep it!!!!

I would have had no idea that the rightful owner could be traced so easily or that the penalty would be so severe.

But in all honesty I would have considered keeping it for a bit but then handed it into the police.

i would have cashed it in, it would never have occured to me that it would be a police matter

If I had just found it on the floor then I might have checked it and if it was a winner probably would have just cashed it in and kept the money.

I would have no idea there would be such a strong penalty for doing this.

i would have taken it to the police station fairly secure in teh knowledge that no one would claim it and that it'd be mine in 30 days legally.

nah thats bollocks i'd have cashed it

I too would love to know how the woman was able to prove the ticket was hers.

if she could tell them what her numbers were, roughly what time it was bought and where it was bought.

I was surprised at the penalty.

If you found a raffle ticket on the floor and kept it and you won a box of Roses with it is that stealing as well?

in another paper it says the woman that bought the ticket knows the staff in the co op it was bought from, they remember her buying a ticket, she also still had the slip thing that you give them when you buy the ticket (you know where you colour in the numbers)

its stealing by finding. if youhand it to the police and no one claims it after 30 days it is legally yours to keep.
until then it is classified as theft

herbietea i thought that when i read the paper, but that was one of the things they used o prove it was hers. if she knows the shop staff she could also have got them to say she bought it and split the money, i guess they could have cctv of her buying the ticket, but it wasn't mentioned.

So if you found one that wasn't a winner is that stealing as well?

more details here
www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2379451.ece

i would have cashed it in myself!!
its not a crime to think you have finally gotten lucky but i would probably have thought about taking the ticket to the police station first if they had over a month to spend the money then the ruling should have been that the woman who bought the ticket should go and swivel for being so careless in the first place but if i was the swivelling woman i would probably think differently about that one
i talk purely from a skint credit-crunch beating perspective obviously
xx ei xx

If I find Lotto tickets I assume they're old ones that are losers and rip them into pieces adn throw them away.

maybe you should check them out in the future expat it could be YOOOUUUU!!!

Not if I'm going to get done for stealing.

Bugger it, I'd just bin it and say it was litter .

I'd cash it in. Worth the risk, I reckon!

DD says that a lot of people who always use the same numbers have a credit card sized card that's already filled in & which is scanned every week to automatically print the ticket.

It's theft, plain and simple. You are depriving the real winner of their winnings.

You can dress it up anyway you want, but it's theft.

how can it be theft if you found it.....they never stole it from her...

I think suspended jail sentence is a bit harsh!!

It was literally just outside the coop that the people found it though.

I seriously would have taken it back into the shop and said - someone's dropped it.

Find a lotto ticket, tear it up and toss it in the bin.

If someone tries to do you for it, point out it was litter and you put litter in the bin.