A Singaporean woman is seeking help after she was allegedly betrayed by a friend who ran away with her winning lottery ticket worth $200,000 Singaporean dollars (approximately $153,000).
In a private Facebook group, 新加坡工作 Jobs in Singapore SG, the woman disclosed that she had won the 4D lottery on Jan. 16.
However, she claimed that she could not obtain her prize as the friend whom she had asked to buy the lottery ticket vanished with the winnings.
She cautioned the Facebook group regarding the dangers of asking someone else to purchase your lottery tickets.
According to the woman, she usually buys her own lottery numbers, but she could not make it on the day she happened to win a substantial prize.
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She noted that she is a single woman who earns less than $2,000 Singaporean dollars (approximately $1,500) a month.
She had promised to split the winnings with her friends and take them out to a nice dinner.
To recover her earnings, the woman gathered evidence, including text conversations, transactions and a picture of the ticket, before approaching the police for help.
However, the police deemed the matter as being between private parties and said they were unable to help her.
The woman then contacted Singapore Pools for a resolution, but she was told that the person who bought the lottery ticket would be the cash prize recipient based on their rules.
“Under our game rules, we have to honor prize payment to whoever presents a valid winning ticket,” Singapore Pools stated on its website. “Hence, we cannot withhold prize payment as and when someone furnishes us with a police report on the purported loss or theft of his/her tickets.”
In a separate post, the woman said that she and her friends are currently seeking a debt collector to retrieve the winnings.
