ATLANTA, Ga. — A metro Atlanta man opened up a box with a gift he ordered on the Internet to find a treasure of scratch-off lottery tickets.
Darryl Bufford told a local reporter that a UPS box arrived this week with a gift he bought from Macy's.
Bufford set the package aside for a few days and opened it when he noticed some of the tape had been pulled loose.
Inside Bufford found eight stacks of unopened scratch-off lottery tickets.
"My first thought was, 'Merry Christmas," Bufford said.
The Georgia Lottery told Buford there are between 100-500 tickets in each stack. The tickets ranged from $1 to $20.
"Everything that you can imagine would be in a store, that's what was in that package," Bufford said.
Bufford didn't know that until the store activates the tickets they are worthless. Bufford said that he thought he had a fortune, but his integrity was worth even more.
"We looked at it and we decided the right thing was to turn them in," Bufford said.
The Georgia Lottery said they have asked UPS to track down what happened with the tickets.
A UPS spokesman said the most likely explanation is that the material fell from a box on a conveyer belt and a worker mistakenly put it back in the wrong box.
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wow!!! He couldn't keep them anyway, but I think he's entitled to a reward for doing the right thing.
Nice to read a story about folks with integrity.
I hear you but they really were worthless. Not even worth the paper they're printed on. Not sure what his mindset was but i'm thinking he must have known, or enquired after receiving them to see if they could possibly be valid/redeemed. Not taking anything away from him, but lets be real here. Anyone with common sense would know that they would be worthless. Good on him though. Integrity would have been if he found a bag of cash labeled "Georgia Lottery Deposit" or something like that and turned it in. Wait, or would that make him stupid?? hahaha
Hmmm...so some packs fall out of a shipment of tickets to a retailer, and then some UPS worker arbitrarily rips open another box and sticks them in there? Strange...
Or did someone intercept a scratch ticket shipment, grab some, and then someone told him, "yo man, you can't redeem those tickets unless the pack is active, put 'em back!"
Both strange...
I disagree. I'm an avid lottery player (although I don't play scratchoffs at all) and I had no clue they needed to be validated. The general public would have no clue these can be validated. Had you said the person figured that they could be tracked by the serial numbers and that's why they chose to just call it in that may have been believeable.
I thought something was odd also.
Oh come on. Why do you think everything lotto related is scanned, time stamped, serial numbered??? Do you really think if you 'won' a jackpot or some other prize the only thing they check would be the winning numbers?? Certainly you don't believe that. They check the store purchased. Time purchased. Validity of the paper. Serial number. And in some cases even video from the store purchased. Not to mention when you go to collect if its a decent size prize, they question your buying pattern, amount of ticket purchased, when you bought it etc to ensure no shenanigans. As for the scratch off, remember when you buy a ticket, you really dont have to scartch it off (of course you should) but to know if you won, they have to scan it at the register, no matter what the scratch off has on it. ITS ALL ELECTRONIC MY FRIEND. Never forget that!!!
Yea, can't trust those temporary UPS workers. Just look at them on youtube stealing iphones. They probably opened any box that looked like it could hold electronics.
Honesty is always the best policy.
The similarities between this story and "Man has Tennessee Lottery tickets delivered to his doorstep Oct 25, 2012" that shows up on the Related Stories section are amazing.
I always enjoy seeing stories of people with integrity.
Good job Mr. Darryl Bufford. They all are losers anyways
Nice story but 100% of the people would have done the same. There are worthless.
"A UPS spokesman said the most likely explanation is that the material fell from a box on a conveyer belt and a worker mistakenly put it back in the wrong box."
Sounds like the Georgia Lottery needs to use stronger package sealing tape and not the cheap stuff...
Scratch offs are so a windfall for the lottery. They prey on the lowest income folks too. After saying that I do play them occasionally, like after a nice hot on the daily, and only a $10 ticket, it brings me back to earth.
I respect the mans honesty. And he does deserve some sort of recognition.
Why ,..? Does a story like this ,..surface every year around Christmas,.Hmmm Urban Legend .lol
Like RedStang said: seasonal workers.
Sorry that I dodn't read all the replies yet, BUT...............Why would the delivery service just put the tickets in a box without first determine the right one?? Doesn't make sense to me. What if it was something dangerous? Or someone's medication?
I just had a nasty fight with the delivery man the other day, he tried to put my coffee tables on the front porch, I asked him if he can read because the mailing lable states the side door delivery. I thought he as about to hit me because he said "Shut the h*ll up" and "You better shut up". I told him that it was MY house, MY merchandise and I will not shut up. Kept at him until he put the stuff where it was suppose to be delivered. I thought he was leaving, but he started to come back out of the truck because I said "what's the matter, your wife didn't give you any this morning". The driver of the truck pulled him back in. Lucky that he did because I was unloading a small bag of tools out of my car. That would have been on the 11'oclock news??
Yes I did report him, and told the service never to have him on my route again.
now i know there is no reward if it ever happens to me ill just keep em and let UPS and lotteries sweat over WTF they got to.
I understand what you're saying but I still had no clue that the store receiving the tickets has to "register" them. Why would anybody know such a thing unless they owned a store? I assumed lottery tickets were delivered like they deliver anything else at the store. Like I said I don't play scratchoffs.
This raises another big question how lazy could the lottery department be not to be able to have their own security van deliver all their lottery scratch off tickets. They go to all the stores always for broken down machines and pick up lots of cash. Trying to rely on ups seems like too risky at this time this is not the first time ups screwed up they delivered a machine gun to somebody else before what else should i expect in my mail somebodies big toe. But i think i figured it out this lottery department already know most of their scratch off are trash anyway so why bother delivering aha.
Thank god for video surveillance every home & business should have them
I know some people even have them in their cars & trucks
Do you deliver all of your mail yourself, or do you just let the post office do it since they were going there anyway and it's cheaper? I don't doubt that a lottery's annual UPS bill is substantial, but I expect it's still far, far cheaper than having a bunch of employees and a bunch of vans to deliver relatively modest packages of lottery tickets. Even if they thought it made sense to do their own deliveries, why would they have them done by the service technicians (who probably don't work for the lottery anyway)? They'd either neeed people to deliver them to the service technicians, or the technicians would be wasting enormous amounts of time going to pick up lottery tickets.
As for the cash, the merchants just put the money in the bank. They then use checks and wire transfers to pay their bills, including what they owe to the lottery.
Have you bought a gift card in the last 10 to 15 years? Or at least seen them hanging by the hundreds in their tiny little packages in so many stores, where it would be so easy to just slip a few in your pocket? I'd think it should be pretty common knowledge by now that virtually every piece of merchandise where the value is dependent on the unique identification of that specific item requires being scanned and activated. Gift cards for Best Buy, pre-paid phone cards, or lottery tickets, they're all just pieces of paper or plastic that depend on a central database to tell a merchant what their value is. That central database won't recognize them as having any value at all unless it shows that they were properly registered.
Good for the guy in the story......how many would have opened the box and thought, "Hey Moe, it's a bonanza!"
Actually the guy is not silly he already did figure it out he has a better luck with free publicity and reward than he would with scratching all thoes worthless tickets that even if he wins $10,000,000 that will get him more likely arested for peti theft. lol so he is taking option B he called the press like the republicans trying to burst obama everyday same old game nothing new.
I used to think this way too. Lotterypost.com is great for teaching us all.
Well, don't loose hope. Certainly, if more than a few Republicans tried, justice would have been accomplished by now and this bankrupter, etc. of the U. S. of A. would be imprisoned.
I guess im just curious, i watched them unpack some new rolls of scratch offs, and scan the 1st and last into the computer, telling it thay are in store and for sale. when someone buys a strip of say 10 tickets, they scan the 1st and last , and the system knows that all 10 have been sold at that time, must be an option on screen.
I asked abot it, and the clerk said they must register all tickets when they arrive. so lottoeries know where the hell they are. as some one else pointed ouy
UPS delivery what a joke. someone at lotteries needs a slap
I like your point by saying they are going that way already but the truth is that they first go the opposit way most of the time and that is where your mail packages get f..ked up. And as to delivering it cheaper well you be lucky to receive any package or even the right package first . Anything in life cheaper ends up costing you more money just like women when ever i hear the word am free or cheap that is when i actually get a head start runing the opposit direction.
What are you talking about? They check the ticket which cannot be faked, but I have never seen them scan a ticket before handing it to someone and if they did they wouldn't need to ask the things you state cause they would have that info already. There might be some questions asked, but unless they suspect something they aren't going to do half of what you say. Red flags are when store employees win, a case like that happen locally here. Unless you know for a fact all the procedures just don't say anything, spreading bad info or what YOU believe to be true is just wrong. For the record, most people would have assumed the tickets were good as we expect the handling of said tickets were held to strict rules and regulations. I would have been more worried about the tracking info and the fact that if I did use them, which I would not have, the serial number would be logged as missing stock. So there, another reasonably smart person counters your derision. Put the tin foil hat down, they don't work anyhow.
Honesty is the best policy. Good thing he turned them in.
i think this is in response to me? i should explain further. there are 2 bar codes on tickets sold here. one is the ticket identifier, the other is a prize identifier. the prize one is under the latex scratch off stuff. you have to assume there is no info on the ticket identifier code that people could use for working out if it is a winner. you would have to sell the ticket, then scan the prize identifier t claim the prize. that involves scratching off the latex.