Unlucky Lottery jackpot win

28 days is the claim period if you find cash and hand it in to a police station for the original owner to claim it. After that it's yours. Theft By Finding is the crime if you find cash and don't make an attempt to return it!

https://metro.co.uk/2017/02/28/when...-to-keep-money-you-find-on-the-floor-6479579/

Still, who's to say that if you had no cash on you at the time, found a fiver, then won on a scratch card bought with it, that you can't then later that day hand in one of your own fivers to the police station as found property? I guess it's an ethical one... The original owner's chance of buying that exact scratch card at that moment is virtually zero again. An argument could be made either side but if you said nothing and simply handed in /a fiver/ at a later time, nobody really loses out?
 
potatolord said:
There's an interesting point in this about ownership.

It seems the win doesn't pass to the card owner as it was bought fraudulently. It seems to have made the entire transaction void.

I'd rather get the ticket than have my £1 refunded...
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Well of course. As soon as the card was stolen any purchases were fraudulent, just the same as the original owner wouldn't then take possession of anything else they purchased at the time. You can't have those protections in place but then have exceptions when it just happens to benefit the owner.
 
TheVoice said:
Well of course. As soon as the card was stolen any purchases were fraudulent, just the same as the original owner wouldn't then take possession of anything else they purchased at the time. You can't have those protections in place but then have exceptions when it just happens to benefit the owner.
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Yeah, i know, but it would have been a heart-warming Christmas tale.

If only the crims' solicitor had done a deal with the card owner, pre-trial, they could have all been winners.
 
Kenai said:
Never really had any need to think about it before but it had never occurred to me you could buy stuff in store by just telling them the card number and expiry date. (I'm assuming 'card number' is including the code on the back too)
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I wondered exactly the same, didn't even know that was possible.

I'm not even sure how it would work unless it was an order placed online, last time i operated a till was 13-15 years ago and from what i recall if you were to pay by card you had either insert or swipe. There was no possible way to just enter the card number.

Maybe someone who's more familiar with tills can comment.

Certainly if i was behind a till and someone was trying to pay by that method i'd refuse unless they had the physical card (or phone/other device for contactless).
 
kaiowas said:
I think it opens up some interesting hypotheticals.

If you found someone’s bank card on the floor, went in to a shop with it and bought scratchcards it would clearly be a similar case to this and would result in any prize not being paid out.

What about if you found a fiver on the floor and did the same thing? Much less likely to be discovered unless you mouth off about how you found a fiver, spent it on scratchcards and won the jackpot but is no different in principle.

Taking things further, how about if you found a fiver, put it in your wallet with some other cash, then later that day bought scratchcards with no way of knowing whether you used the fiver you found or one you already had?

Moral of the story. If you find cash, say nothing ;)
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Yeah for cash there's no way they'd find out unless you openly admitted to it.

Would the police even be interested in small amounts like that? I would bet most people on here if they lost a fiver would be annoyed at themselves but would just get on with life, you wouldn't then go and report it at the police station. There's also the bigger issue of a) proving where you found the fiver, and b) for the claimant proving where the fiver was lost - unless it was taken from a cashpoint after someone forgot to take the money with them.

So yeah it'd pretty much come down to your ethics - if you won a jackpot from a fiver you picked up off the ground, would you knowingly keep the money or would you decline the prize based on the fiver not being yours. I'd be surprised if anyone on this forum would decline it - it's not a stolen fiver per se (i.e. you didn't pinch it out of someone's wallet), and again assuming you didn't see the person who dropped it either, i think in good conscience you know you'd never be able to trace the owner.
 
Semple said:
I wondered exactly the same, didn't even know that was possible.

I'm not even sure how it would work unless it was an order placed online, last time i operated a till was 13-15 years ago and from what i recall if you were to pay by card you had either insert or swipe. There was no possible way to just enter the card number.

Maybe someone who's more familiar with tills can comment.

Certainly if i was behind a till and someone was trying to pay by that method i'd refuse unless they had the physical card (or phone/other device for contactless).
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It'd be processed as a Card Not Present transaction I think, usually used for taking payment details over the phone etc. You'd assume that retailers shouldn't be processing them that way if the person is stood right there but perhaps there's no rule against it.
 
I wonder if they're sat in prison for the 5mins jail time they actually got, pondering if asking the victim for permission to use their card to buy some stuff in exchange for some serious money was more viable than, "no i don't have an account, can i have it in cash?"
 
mrk said:
28 days is the claim period if you find cash and hand it in to a police station for the original owner to claim it. After that it's yours. Theft By Finding is the crime if you find cash and don't make an attempt to return it!

https://metro.co.uk/2017/02/28/when...-to-keep-money-you-find-on-the-floor-6479579/

Still, who's to say that if you had no cash on you at the time, found a fiver, then won on a scratch card bought with it, that you can't then later that day hand in one of your own fivers to the police station as found property? I guess it's an ethical one... The original owner's chance of buying that exact scratch card at that moment is virtually zero again. An argument could be made either side but if you said nothing and simply handed in /a fiver/ at a later time, nobody really loses out?
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Some time ago 3 guys in a local pub were discussing something along these lines, it appeared that a mutual friend of theirs had found an envelope on an underground train which contained £60.
He wouldn’t hand it in at a ticket office as he maintained that the ticket clerk would just pocket it, so he told one of the 3 guys that he’d handed it in at a police station, as after a period of time if it hadn’t been claimed he could claim it.
One of the other guys said, “What a mug, didn’t he realise that old Bill would send a mate to the Lost Property Office to claim it, and they’d split it £30 each?”
 
That's assuming internal police corruption for the sake of such a small value sum. regardless though, everything is logged and a paper trail is left behind anyway so even if it's years later if someone puts two and two together during an audit or a crime where the "friend" is in for something else or whatever it begins to unfold.

In the 70s etc I can imagine that happening though but not these days in the digital age.

Plus, you could just tell the police that if someone does come to claim it then to contact you directly so the location of the find can be verified I guess just for the added security. What are the police going to do, arrest you for not telling where you found it?!
 
mrk said:
That's assuming internal police corruption for the sake of such a small value sum. regardless though, everything is logged and a paper trail is left behind anyway so even if it's years later if someone puts two and two together during an audit or a crime where the "friend" is in for something else or whatever it begins to unfold.

In the 70s etc I can imagine that happening though but not these days in the digital age.

Plus, you could just tell the police that if someone does come to claim it then to contact you directly so the location of the find can be verified I guess just for the added security. What are the police going to do, arrest you for not telling where you found it?!
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Agreed 100%, if I handed anything in that was left in my taxi I was asked “Where did the trip start and end, and at what time was the trip approximately?”
Sometimes I didn’t know, one time I kept hearing a phone ringing from the passenger compartment, after one or two minutes I said, “You going to answer that?”
He said, “It’s not mine, it was on the seat when I got in.”
Christ knows how long it had been there.
 
Jean-F said:
Some time ago 3 guys in a local pub were discussing something along these lines, it appeared that a mutual friend of theirs had found an envelope on an underground train which contained £60.
He wouldn’t hand it in at a ticket office as he maintained that the ticket clerk would just pocket it, so he told one of the 3 guys that he’d handed it in at a police station, as after a period of time if it hadn’t been claimed he could claim it.
One of the other guys said, “What a mug, didn’t he realise that old Bill would send a mate to the Lost Property Office to claim it, and they’d split it £30 each?”
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LOL IIRC that sort of plot in an episode of the Bill once, albeit a higher cash value.

As mrk says they log stuff like that, I doubt many police would want to risk their jobs over trying to illegally grab £30 each with a mate.

While police corruption still happens it's perhaps more likely to involve things like collusion with organised crime or indeed collusion/inappropriate sharing of information with former colleagues or future potential employers.
 
TheVoice said:
It'd be processed as a Card Not Present transaction I think, usually used for taking payment details over the phone etc. You'd assume that retailers shouldn't be processing them that way if the person is stood right there but perhaps there's no rule against it.
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Yeah that makes sense, but still, I would have thought someone physically in front of you trying to pay that way would raise suspicions.
 
Semple said:
Yeah that makes sense, but still, I would have thought someone physically in front of you trying to pay that way would raise suspicions.
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It should but there are always "dodgy" shops you can find where you can do this kind of thing. Esp in poorer areas.
 
kaiowas said:
I think it opens up some interesting hypotheticals.

If you found someone’s bank card on the floor, went in to a shop with it and bought scratchcards it would clearly be a similar case to this and would result in any prize not being paid out.

What about if you found a fiver on the floor and did the same thing? Much less likely to be discovered unless you mouth off about how you found a fiver, spent it on scratchcards and won the jackpot but is no different in principle.

Taking things further, how about if you found a fiver, put it in your wallet with some other cash, then later that day bought scratchcards with no way of knowing whether you used the fiver you found or one you already had?

Moral of the story. If you find cash, say nothing ;)
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Would doing it with cash that you found count as fraud though (genuine question)?

If you found it, is it technically stolen (i guess it would be if you made no attempt to find the owner maybe).
 
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