SINGAPORE: After a man claimed to have found several 4D lottery tickets that someone had allegedly left behind on the bus, he turned them over to the police. His story of finding the tickets, one of which was a first-prize winner, was then published in a local daily.
However, netizens who looked at the tickets closely when photos were posted in a Shin Min Daily News report pointed out that the winning ticket looked like it had been tampered with or, in other words, falsified.
The tale begins with a 70-year-old man named Wu saying that as he got off a bus at Marsiling MRT station on New Year’s Eve, his eye caught three 4D lottery tickets on a seat. Due to the sizable crowd at the time, he did not see who had left them behind, he said.
One of the tickets, which had the number 6777, was the big winner that day, with a prize of $10,000. The following day, Mr Wu gave the ticket to the police, filing reports at first Toa Payoh and then later at Yew Tee, thinking that the ticket owner may live in the area.
Since he had also bought such lottery tickets in the past, he took note of that day’s winning numbers and saw that he was in possession of the top winning ticket.
The report in Shin Min Daily News said that the owner could claim the tickets from the police by being able to give the numbers on the non-winning tickets, bought on Dec 26 and 28, that had also been found by Mr Wu.
The Chinese-language daily also said that Mr Wu himself had been a big winner in the past when a ticket he bought won him a $20,000 first prize in 2021.
However, he said he had no desire to keep the tickets for himself and wanted the rightful owner to have the winning ticket and its accompanying prize. Keeping it for himself would make him “live a restless and uneasy life,” he added.
But when his story was published, netizens questioned it. A report in Mothership says that a netizen pointed out that the last “7” on the winning ticket looked like there was a sticker pasted over it.
This may have been enough to cast a shadow on the whole story, and it appears that Shin Min Daily News has decided to take it down since it is now inaccessible.
However, a separate Jan 6 (Monday) report in the Chinese daily says that Mr Wu has been told that the ticket may be a fake. He, in turn, said he has withdrawn the police reports he fined and is “thinking of lodging a police report regarding the doctored ticket.” /TISG
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