I’m not going to bother trying to investigate their motives for leaving it in the street. I can’t be a mind reader.
Actually, if the ticket is inside a wallet, I’d probably just return the whole wallet intact. I didn’t actually bother to read the OP at first. The thread title says “ticket and ID,” so I answered as if a tucket and an ID card were found next to each other. In all honesty, I wouldn’t feel comfortable actually taking something out of a wallet. I really have returned wallets full of cash and credit cards before, and declined to accept any rewards.
I found a scratchcard not long ago and thought myself in a similar position (no wallet though - but there are ways and means of tracking the ticket to the individual sale). Being a dumbass, I just read it wrong.
Anyways, I started a thread a while back asking if Dopers found an ATM ready to dispense, would they help themselves. Thankfully most were shocked at the suggestion - it’s not your money, and neither is this - I didn’t buy it, after all. IIRC a lot of the responses said that you’d be caught, and I think there’s a good chance you could get busted with this too. Even if you were completely untraceable…character is what you are in the dark.
Plus they’re likely to snap you off a lil sum’n sum’n in gratitude anyway.
When I was in high school, I found a string of six scratched off scratch offs outside a bar, lying on the street. My presumption was those were truly thrown away–they were near a trash can, but apparently missed. One of them was a $25 winner. In that case, I just cashed it, and took my friends out (who were with me) for pizza. There’s probably some ethical or moral inconsistency there, but it didn’t bother me.
And that happened to me, too, in college. I ejected the card, tracked down the owner, and delivered it to him. He just slammed the door on me without so much as a thanks. I honestly wasn’t fishing for a reward, but I did want at least a “thank you.”
See, that DOES sound abandoned to me. If a bunch of scratch-offs were lying on the street, I’d figure some damn litterbug had scratched them, not paid attention, and thrown them away. The chances that they’d lost them (and that they’d therefore come looking for them) are infinitesimal, unlike the chances that someone would be looking for a wallet lost on the street.
I had someone return a wallet to me when I was in college–I was on vacation in San Francisco over spring break, staying at a hostel, when someone called the front desk saying he’d found my wallet and somehow figured out where I was staying (maybe there was a receipt from the hostel in it). When the guy showed up, a homeless guy, I thanked him profusely for returning the wallet, but all he’d do was talk about how much trouble he’d gone to to track me down and bring it to me. Eventually I took the hint and gave him five bucks. I think the tiny quantity of the reward pissed him off even more–but honestly at that point in my life, five bucks was a lot of money to me.
And that changes the ethical equation how, exactly? If anything, that would make me feel even more compelled to return the ticket and wallet to the rightful owner.
The original owner seems to be playing quick picks. He wouldn’t know either way if he won or not most likely. I would keep the winning playslip, and send the wallet and it’s other contents back to him anonomously. How would he know, and how could it be proven I took the winning ticket? The person who stole the cash and cards could have taken it.
