If I found a ticket and an ID lying several feet from each other on the ground, I might be able to convince myself that I wasn’t stealing. But finding them in a wallet together, my conscience would preclude me being able to cash in the ticket.
I can think of several ways I could get away with keeping the ticket whilst returning the wallet without arising suspicion, but I just couldn’t - as far as I’m concerned, it would be the same as finding an $80m check.
I would contact them, letting them know upfront that it’s a winning lottery ticket, and ask them to pick it up directly (I wouldn’t mail it for security’s sake). When they did, I would remind them that I could have legally cashed the whole thing, and I’d appreciate whatever they felt was a suitable reward. If that were $5, $5000, or $500k, it would be more than I had at the start of the ordeal.
And if they gave me nothing, at least I’d have a great drinking story.
As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, if you’re feeling like returning it, and want to have a bit of fun and perhaps make some fame and money out of it, contact the media! They would eat up a story like this, and you’ll probably make out with a little bit of dosh for your effort.
On a side note, the inverse of this question would make a great poll - if you had lost a winning ticket, and someone had returned it, how big a reward (if any) would you give them?
If the jackpot were $20m after taxes, I’d give them at least $250k, more if they were obviously not well-off.
As a followup, I should say that if I found a wallet stuffed with lottery tickets, whose rightful owner was obviously the ID holder, I don’t think I’d go through and check all the lottery tickets to see if they won.
Which would suck, because there goes the drinking story. “I found someone’s wallet and returned it to them” doesn’t quite have the same ring as “I gave up $80m 'cause I’m such a good guy.”
That’s what I intended, but I can easily see ways people might find out. I hadn’t thought of the lottery board or whatever being able to track down the store where the ticket was purchased, and the possibility fo the purchase being on securiy camera, for instance. The latter strikes me as somewhat unlikely (particularly if you waited a few weeks), but it’s not impossible for the ticket to be traced.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they just asked you for your story, and where you bought your ticket. But I tried my best to discount that possibility in answering your hypothetical, although I do think it’s a real possibility that my story might fall apart if I did try to cash it in. Especially since I’m a terrible liar.
Key to this sort of lie is a believable dearth of detail. You’d first make sure you knew how long you had before the ticket expired, and wait out most of that. Put the ticket in a secure place (here’s where it’s convenient to already have a safe deposit box, as it’d look odd to have begun a rental just after the drawing. A week or so before the ticket would expire, retrieve and redeem it. When anyone asks where you got the ticket, say that you don’t recall, adding that you buy tickets occasionally but not religiously and don’t check every drawing. Copiously praise Athena (or whatever false god you worship, heathen!) for Her providentially reminding you of your possession of the ticket.
Or, I suppose, if the big $80M ticket is being hunted down for a winner, at some point, there may be a media report about where the ticket was sold, as the vendor selling the ticket usually gets some %age as a prize, too.
Oh, for pity’s–you’re the one who distinguished between this act and fraud, and who erroneously called it “abandoned property.” You essentially brought legalities into it by erroneously using legal terms of art.
Legally, it’s not abandoned property. Ethically it isn’t, either: there’s a huge ethical difference between something a person has abandoned, and something a person has lost.
The law doesn’t map to ethics in many cases, IMO, but in this case, the distinction drawn in the law is also a useful ethical distinction.
As for the follow-up question, in my fantasies about the lottery, I imagine setting aside enough money to live comfortably off the interest for the rest of my life, paying off all my debts, and then giving the rest to charity. So I’d double the amount I was setting aside for myself, give half that amount to the other person, keep the other half for myself, and give the rest to charity. That’d probably work out to something like $2 million each.
I didn’t bring any legalities to it, you did. In my opinion, it’s abandoned property. If the question is only about ethical opinions, then the law is irrelevant. You’re the one who brought the law into it, which changes the whole equation. Ethically, in my opinion, it’s abandoned property.
Leaving the law aside, doesn’t “abandonment” not carry a sense of intention to it? I can’t think of a definition of the word, as it is commonly or technically used, that does not carry the meaning of intention with it. As I said above, a child is not “abandoned” if it is merely lost. Or are the two words completely synonymous to you?
I do not understand this attitude. Non-perfect human beings – in other words, ALL human beings – sometimes lose things, and when someone else finds a lost item whose owner can reasonably be determined, the non-dickish thing to do is to return it to them if possible. The lottery ticket was found in a wallet on the street, not thrown in a garbage can. The latter is abandonment; the former is not.
That’s not an opinion, that’s such an idiosyncratic definition of the word “abandoned” that it fails to communicate any meaning. I can’t tell what you mean by the word: at what point does someone abandon something, by your definition? When I park my car and walk away from it, have I abandoned it? If I can’t find my keys in the morning, is it because I have abandoned them? If my wallet falls out of my pocket and I immediately stoop to pick it up, have I momentarily abandoned my wallet? What if I don’t notice that it’s fallen out until 2 minutes later?
Yes, these are all ridiculous ways to use “abandoned”, I agree. I don’t think any of them are more ridiculous than your claim that a lost wallet is an abandoned wallet.
You’re welcome to use the word however you want: that’s glory for you. However, if you actually intend to communicate something through your use of the word, I suggest either using a conventional definition for it, or else explaining what you intend to communicate with the word.
As a relevant aside, if you’re the winner of 80 million (or 20 million) smackers, couldn’t you afford a nice big security fence, a private drive with a mile’s worth of driveway to keep out paparazzi, security guards, and a limo with black windows that comes straight to your indoor 50-car garage to pick you up without ever being seen on video camera? Or hell, a private helipad on your roof if you’re paranoid about being followed by news vans?
I don’t think fielding any media “storm” is necessary if you don’t want to.
Not at all - I certainly wouldn’t expect 50% of the winnings if I turned over a winning ticket to its rightful owner, and I wouldn’t feel obligated to give 50% of my winnings in the reverse situation. Finding a winning $80m ticket and returning it to the owner doesn’t ethically obligate said owner in any way, any more than if it were a fiver, $500, or an empty wallet.
Let’s put it this way - say you find the keys to my $1m Bugatti (seriously, I have one in the driveway right now ;)), along with my ID. Since my car is obviously my property, aside from leaving the keys where you found them, the only legal option would be to return the keys to me somehow.
Upon receiving the keys from you, should I reward you by letting you drive my car every other day? Should I give you $500k, the cash equivalent to half the car’s value? No, I would give you a reasonable reward for returning my property (probably a couple grand, were I rich enough to own a Bugatti). I don’t see that finding a lottery ticket belonging to someone else is any different.
Just because one decision (turning over an $80m that you may be legally entitled to) is ethically more difficult does not entitle the person returning the property to anything, any more than if they were in a less ethically challenging situation, such as, say, returning some car keys. How wealthy the receiver might be (or is about to become) shouldn’t factor into the ethical equation.
I will say this - if I had turned in a multi-million $ ticket, and received $250k in return, I would find that more than generous. That’s “pay-off-your-debts-and-turn-your-life-around” money for most folks.
I’ll decide that on a case by case basis.
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Idiosyncratic indeed.
The OP doesn’t QUITE say that the wallet was found on the ground, but when I read lying in the street, I take it to mean on the ground, not in a garbage can or dumpster. To me that means accidentally dropped, not ditched, as does the fact that there were photographs and i.d. in it.