Good Samaritan hands in lost Spanish lottery ticket

Winning the lottery is a dream shared by many. Finding a winning lottery ticket, on the other hand, is a moral conundrum that could split a room down the middle.

Many will simply keep and cash. After all, to win the lottery you need an enormous slice of luck – even if you didn’t purchase a ticket in the first place. There’s no skill involved, either, so cashing in a found winning lottery ticket isn’t getting rich on the endeavours of others… or so runs the argument…

But it is a massive moral grey area, and one that a man in the northern Spanish city of La Coruna wasn’t about to toy with when he handed in a winning ticket worth a massive €4.7 million.

Manuel Reija Gonzalez, who discovered the ticket, immediately knew the right thing to do.

“I never for a moment thought about keeping it because I wanted to be able to sleep well at night with a clear conscience,” he told the BBC, adding that he empathised with the unidentified individual who lost it.

“Because here was somebody who had a problem forgetting his ticket and I put myself in his shoes, and it’s the sort of thing I could have done. I thought the best thing to do was just to return the ticket.”

Local authorities have confirmed they will not reveal the exact details of where or when the ticket for last year’s 30th June 2012 draw was bought. All that is known is that the ticket was left behind in the shop where Reija Gonzalez works. He kept it for a year in the vain hope that somebody would come back to claim it but, when they didn’t, decided to check the numbers before throwing it away.

“I couldn’t believe it the first time I checked the ticket, so I checked it again just in case there was a computer error,” he told a local radio station. “I was standing up but I had to sit. I almost broke the chair.” If the ticket’s rightful owner is not forthcoming, then organisers have confirmed that the money will go to Mr Reija Gonzalez.

The grace period for the search is two years, and despite the potential windfall coming Reija Gonzalez’s way, he said that he would be delighted if the real winner could be identified.

”We’re still in a phase where it’s all just been made public in La Coruna so really what will be will be, and I can’t really tell you how I feel,” he said.

For now, the ticket will stay under lock and key at the city’s council headquarters, while a concerted ‘lost and found’ campaign begins.

Here’s hoping the rightful owner can be returned to their winning ticket… and that they have the good sense to split the money with the man who made it all possible – good Samaritan, Reija Gonzalez.

What would you do…