What would you do if you found a £20 note on the floor….keep it or hand it in somewhere?
Everyone has a different set of morals when it comes to such matters, and it’s interesting to see how differently such debates are judged when it’s not cold, hard cash but a winning betting slip that is the object in question.
If you find a tenner on your local high street and pocket it, you are unlikely to face any criminal action. Why? Because it’s very difficult for somebody to prove that the banknote belongs to them….unless there’s accompanying CCTV footage (not that we condone pocketing the cash, of course).
But what about a betting slip that is found on the floor of the bookies….what then? Interestingly, this is considered to be a crime – fraud being the term loosely used to describe such an action.
Should I Cash In a Winning Betslip I Found?
The answer is a resounding no.
In December, police in Sheffield put out a public call to help identify a man who had cashed a winning betting slip that he had found in a branch of Betfred in the city.
CCTV footage of the individual was released after it was confirmed that another punter in the shop had accidentally dropped the winning ticket, before the wanted party swooped and cashed it in at the desk.
It seems that ‘finder’s keepers, loser’s weepers’ is not a defence that stands up to scrutiny under the law – a couple were handed suspended sentences of eleven months each back in 2009 when they tried to claim a £30,000 lottery jackpot from a ticket they had found on a shop floor.
The moral of the story is that you will be found out if you try to claim a lost winning betslip as your own….so don’t do it!
What Happens If I Lose My Betting Slip?
These days, the good news for punters is that all bets are logged on a bookmakers’ system, and so there will be a unique reference number captured at the time you place the bet.
The bookie won’t just pay out willy nilly, of course, and you will have to offer up some identifying information to confirm that it was you that placed the bet – the time and date would be a good start, and if you have paid via a debit card that too can be used as a form of ID when you can reference some data linked to it.
Most bookies even have a system in place these days, and will issue you with a lost receipt form to fill in to action your claim.
A number of high street bookmakers use an EPOS system that captures your betting slip in photographic form as it is processed, which means that the firm has your handwriting on file. To that end, you may even be asked to re-write the slip with your selections – that will then be checked against the original.