What would happen if you found a winning lotto ticket?
Question by Rawrrrrr: What would happen if you found a winning lotto ticket?
I am wanting to write a story about a woman who finds a jackpot winning lotto ticket, but I am not sure if she could cash it in since she just found it in a park. Would she need proof of purchase? Are there any legal problems that could come from her cashing it in? I am wanting my story to be authentic.
Best answer:
Answer by Manuel
No you don’t need any evidence except your winning lotto ticket
on the back of most lottery tickets is a line for a signature
in most cases? an unsigned ticket means it can belong to ANYBODY
*however* if a ticket is reported STOLEN?….it becomes a legal issue
different states have different laws…..what’s legal in California might be illegal in New York
A winning lottery ticket is a bearer instrument. That means if you have it, you own it.
I don’t think you need to worry about someone reporting it stolen. It wouldn’t make sense for a stolen ticket to be found in a park.
In the UK, a lost or stolen ticket still belongs to the purchaser, and the organisers take steps to verify the claimant by asking for such details as the date and time of purchase. Other lottery organisers seem to operate similar schemes.
The links include how to claim for a lost or stolen ticket in the UK, the story of how a UK ticket was found to have stolen, and a similar case from New York.
The ticket belongs to the person that purchased it. If the woman turns in the winning ticket and no one comes forward to dispute it, then she wins free and clear! However it would get real messy if a man comes forward and says he purchased the ticket and lost it while walking his dog in the park last week.
The lottery knows exactly when and where that winning ticket was purchased. They’d pull survelliance tapes from the store and can see exactly who was standing at the counter buying the ticket. That’s most likely the person that would receive the money.
Honestly, if the woman waits and goes to the lottery and tells them straight up that she found the ticket I don’t know what would happen if there were no other claims for it.
There are ways to find the purchaser of a wining lottery ticker. For instance they can pull the tapes of who purchased it as well as find where the winning ticket was purchased(city/state). However this is usually worst case scenerio and someone reported it missing. You can make this a point in your story, that no one claimed the winning ticket so the woman kept it. Check out the website below for a little more in depth information for lottery winnings.
As long as the back of the ticket is not signed, the ticket belongs to whoever has pocession of it, good luck and happy writing.
As long as no one signed it, it’s now yours.
There was a case in Arkansas just last year where a judge awarded $ 1 million in winnings to a woman who actually threw away a lottery ticket. Another woman dug a handful of tickets out of the trash, and found a winner among them.
http://news.yahoo.com/woman-lost-ark-lotto-ticket-entitled-1m-001711454.html
If a ticket that was intentionally discarded can be reclaimed by the purchaser, then one which was lost is certainly going to be protected the same way. If the person who found the ticket is smart, they won’t say anything about where they got it. Once the story gets out, there will be dozens of people who all claim that that was THEIR ticket, they were walking in the park and lost it, now give me my millions of dollars please. The cash could be tied up in the courts for years. The lottery commission might be able to determine who the actual buyer was, but not all stores have camera systems, and the ones that do don’t keep their records around forever. It’s quite possible that a purchase from a couple of weeks earlier would have already been recorded over.