When I hit a million I'm going to ask my neighbor to take it to Louisville and cash it for me..Yah that's what I'll do..DUMB..Take it your self.."There's one born everyday"..

Actually there's no good reason to have a ticket verified before you plan to actually claim it let alone have a friend do it for you.  Since lottery tickets are presumed to belong to the bearers, no one should ever allow anyone else to hold their winning lottery tickets until after they establish their ownership.
 
In Ohio if your lottery ticket is worth between $600 and $5000 and you want to collect your money from a local bank rather than the nearest Lottery Regional Office then you must get you ticket verified at a local retailer who will give you a PAY TO BEARER ticket and a claim form to take to the bank with proper photo I.D. to collect your money.  Anything larger than $5000 you have to make a trip to the Regional Office.

I have to agree with some of the people in this thread........it was bad judgment and just plain crazy to just hand over a 5-digit winner to a friend like that.  No way would I do that if I hit $20,000 (heck, I would probably keep it under wraps and not tell anyone....not even here at LP....for a while to be on the safe side).

Friend?This was no friend.This was a thief that stole from her.If it hadn't been the lottery ticket that was stolen it would have been something else.

Debt is normal, I guess. But if you're struggling, then it's common sense not to play.

Yes, debt is normal, so saying that you shouldn't play "if you are in any kind of debt" isn't realistic. OTOH, this woman apparently has more than just  routine debts. Somebody who is  "behind on everything" definitely shouldn't be spending their money on lottery tickets, or other non-essential stuff. There's more here than simply handing something worth 20 grand to a friend to suggest that maybe this woman isn't good at making wise decisions.

As for whether or not she'll ever get the money, I wouldn't be overly optimistic. Since the retailer's validation presumably proves that *specific* ticket was presented, the lottery can identify that ticket if it is located later. That could let them recover the ticket and refuse payment to anyone who presents it for payment. OTOH, assuming whoever has the ticket now is smart enough to know that, they won't try to cash it.  That would put the woman in the position of proving she had a winning ticket that has now been lost. Besides simply handing the friend 20 grand (BTW, how sick do your kids have to be that you "don't have your mind on" a ticket worth 20k?), there's one other part of the story I find odd. The store clerk says the friend told him it wasn't her ticket. That suggests that she had no plan to steal the ticket at that time. Or perhaps it was a smart preemptive move that gives her plausible deniability. Besides the difficulty of collecting if the ticket is never seen again, it  may be difficult to convict the friend of stealing it.

SmoothJuice:

After thinking about it this situation I disagree with you stating that this is  stupid.  If you read the article it said that she was behind in her bills and that she purchased 3 tickets at $2 a piece.   She only spent $6 while looking at my bills I don't have a bill that is $6.00.  If you are struggling and you spend $6 and play the 4-digit lottery that will get you $30,000 or $3,000 in the 3 digit lottery is straight.  She was just trying to find away to capitalize quickly on a small investment.  With that $6 she couldn't make a $20,000 profit that fast, with the stock market being in the  condition that it is in with a $6 investment she would not make a $20,000 profit.  I have no problems with what she did with the $6 I would have a problem if she used $600 for the lottery instead of paying her bills.

one word.

Stupid!

I can just imagine that this young women has a limited knowledge base as far as how to claim your lottery winnings. She can't possibly be a regular player and not know to sign the back of that ticket. If she had just read the back of the ticket and followed the instructions, she may not have run into this problem.

At this time in our bad economy, more and more people are turning to playing the lottery in hopes to luck out on a big win, and many of these people don't have the foggiest of idea of what they are doing and/or how to cash their winning. Some don't even realized that they have won unless someone tells them.

It drives me "nuts" when a fairly new player comes into the story and starts asking questions about how to play this or that, and then, WHAM...walk out with a nice win.

Mind you, I'm always happy that they win,(I always think...beginners luck), then...there I am, struggling to get more that 2 winning numbers on a keno line.

SmoothJuice,

I, too would have to beg the differ. If you don't play you won't win. What it really boils down to is who needs an enemy with a friend like she had. Boy is this story sad. Desperate times cause for drastic measures. Although they say we are in a recession one should also be worried about the suppression and the depression that comes behind all this BS going on in our lives today. I pray that her family and she is able to keep their composer, opps ms composure and things work themselves out if what they say is true because there's no tellings what one might do in this situation if not thinking straight which would be really hard to do.

Now the quote "Keep your friends close but your enemies closer" is becoming more clearer to me.

Can you get dumber than dumb? Why would anyone with 1/4 of a brain give a winning ticket to someone else to check for them?  Come on people common sense has to come into play somewhere!! All this village idiot had to do was wait until she had the time to go and check the ticket herself. After all she has up to six months after that particular game ends to cash in her ticket. Also if she wants to know when the game ends all she has/had to do was go to the TX Lotto website and check the ticket by the game number printed on the ticket.

If Mrs. Charlez doesn't get one dime of this money, I can't say she got a raw deal. I say she got what she deserves!! She should have used common sense!! Her family is struggling to pay their bills and this air head hands over a $20,000 ticket to her friend to verify?!!! How 100% brainless can one person be?!! They say a fool and his money is soon parted. See how quickly this fool, Mrs. Charlez, and her money was soon parted? And to think, she has the responsibility of shaping young and impressionable minds. I shudder at the thought.

"If you don't play you won't win."

What part of "lottery" is confusing? If you don't play, you can't lose your money.

"Desperate times cause for drastic measures."

Trying to solve your financial problems by playing the lottery isn't desperate, it's stupid. For the most part, the odds of doing anything better than breaking even are at least 25 to 1, and the chance of winning enough money that it will matter is much, much higher. The not-so-desperate measures this woman should have been taking include cutting out as much unnecessary spending as possible, so that she can afford to pay the bills for the things they really need. She got extremely lucky by winning, but her win is offset by thousands of people in similar situations who lost their money. Much of the reason for the widespread financial mess we're faced with is people being irresponsible enough (or gullible enough) to buy things they can't afford, and pay for them with "money" they don't have. Just because you've got a job doesn't mean you can afford a Lexus, a widescreen HD TV or a bass boat. There's a reason that plenty of people do well on 50k per year and others fall behind while making 200k.

This story is a summation of what *NOT* to do with a winning ticket.

If you're going to brag about it... don't be lazy, go to the Store yourself and validate it and fill a Claim Form.
Sign the ticket immediately! (duh!)

People are desperate during this Depression, and sometimes enough $ can make friendship be forgotten.
Don't hand a winning ticket even to your best friend. Only show after validation. I mean, isn't it more fun to
go to the Store yourself with it? If there was a situation she couldn't go to the Store yet then she should have
said she'd go to the Store herself when the kids were OK.

People can lie about things especially when money is involved.

The friend offering to take the ticket and the statement over the cell phone convinces me she stole it.
The friend didn't say directly to the clerk but to someone on the cell phone. This makes it more difficult for her
(the friend) to claim it's her ticket. She was saying this because someone on the other end heard the clerk
saying $20,000 and (friend) didn't want (person talking to) to be witness to her theft. Not smart of friend to
be talking on cellphone while committing fraud!

This story is a summation of what *NOT* to do with a winning ticket.

This story is a summation of what *NOT* to do with a any ticket because you don't what it's worth until you've checked it yourself.

how cooky