Scratchoff Standoff – The Weird Side of the Internet

Scratchoff Standoff – The Weird Side of the Internet – by Liam Sweeny.

Can you ever work with someone who steals from you? I don’t mean the last yogurt in the office refrigerator, and I don’t mean someone who steals your significant other (because you can’t steal people) and I don’t even mean someone you know taking your sh*t without permission. I mean someone who doesn’t know you and lifts your possessions. Yes? No?

But what if there was half a mil on it?

Jean-David E. – Frenchman, young guy, had his backpack stolen, and it had his cards and banking information. He, of course, went to cancel his cards, and he found that one of those cards had been used in a local shop. He either went there himself or he called the police to go there. Be cooler if he went there himself; that’s how I would write this out in fiction. Shop owner said two homeless men bought some stuff, one of the “stuffs” being a scratchoff ticket. A winning scratchoff ticket. 500,000 euros, which was, at the time of this reporting, $523,000.

So what does Jean-David E. do? He puts out a public appeal to the thieves, all good if they cough up the ticket. He even offers to share the prize, make all of them rich. So I think about this, and maybe Jean-David E. had like a hundred euros in those accounts to begin with. If they come forward, how do you untangle that? Their act netted half-a-million, but they couldn’t have done a thing without Jean-David E.’s money.

The prosecutor wants to seize all the money as ill-gotten gains too. And the longer they’re out there with an uncashed ticket, the closer it comes to being expired. This is the 3D chess version of a Mexican standoff.

The only thing that can make this more complicated is if the thieves drop the ticket in a church collection box.

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