SINGAPORE: A woman made the news on Tuesday (Feb 11) after she turned over to the police a winning lottery ticket she had found at a temple. She told Shin Min Daily News that she did not want money that didn’t belong to her, many in Singapore have praised her for her honesty, even wishing that she finds some good luck of her own.
Chen Yiming, 63, said she found the ticket on Feb 3 at Loyang Tua Pek Kong temple, where she had gone with her sister to watch a lion dance performance. After picking up the Singapore Pools 4D lottery ticket from the ground, she tried to look for its owner.
However, this proved to be impossible as there were many others present at the time, and she decided to take the ticket home with her and wait until the prize draw was scheduled.
The ticket showed that its owner had put $2 on big and small bets with the following combinations: 3388 and 8833. As she regularly buys lottery tickets herself, Mdm Chen made sure to keep a sharp eye out for the draw, feeling that the owner of the ticket would feel anxious about the outcome.
The ticket was for draws last weekend, on Feb 8 and 9. If it happened that the owner did not win anything, she would just throw it away.
However, one number on the ticket was the first prize winner of a 4D draw on Feb 9 and as soon as Mdm Chen discovered this on the following day, she went to the Sengkang Police Station to hand over the ticket so that its owner could claim it.
“S$10,000 is not a small sum of money. The other person must be very anxious. I hope the owner will come and claim the ticket after seeing the news,” she told the Chinese-language daily.
Mdm Chen’s decency has been widely praised, and one netizen has said that if and when the owner is found, they hope that she will be given part of the prize as an “honesty reward.”
“Thank you for being kind and honest… May you be blessed,” wrote another.
Others wished that she would similarly get a stroke of luck when she buys a lottery ticket again one day.
“If you have found a winning ticket, please hand it to the police yourself. Anyone who dishonestly claims the prize for his or her own interest may be in violation of the law as it may be construed as dishonest misappropriation of property,” says the Singapore Pools website. /TISG