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A woman in Singapore was supposedly denied her winning lottery ticket, after she got a friend of hers to place a bet on her behalf, which eventually won some S$200,000 in winnings -- but the ticket was not handed over.

This cautionary tale of sorts was shared in a closed Facebook group on Jan. 16, as a casual warning about the perils of requesting another person to make lottery bets for you -- a common enough occurrence among gambling-mad Singapore inhabitants.

What happened

According to the lengthy post in Chinese, a woman claimed that the incident occurred to a colleague of hers, who had supposedly won more than S$200,000 after making a 4D punt -- but the money was nowhere in her pocket.

The woman wrote that the supposed rightful winner would usually bet on 4D regularly, but missed the chance to do so one day and got a friend to help her place a bet.

The woman who asked for help then found out she had won over S$200,000 -- a huge sum considering that she makes S$2,000 or so a month.

As a single woman who works in Singapore and comes from a humble background, she had never come across such a windfall in her life, the post added.

Overjoyed by her win, she then promised to buy all her colleagues dinner, and even split some of the winnings with them.

Cut ties

However, the friend who helped buy the lottery ticket then went missing and refused to hand over the winning ticket.

The friend even blocked the woman from contacting her and cut all ties.

The post added that the group of colleagues are all relatively young, and have never encountered such a situation before in their lives, and they were naturally at a loss.

Went to the police

The colleagues then suggested gathering evidence to lodge a police report in the hopes it might work.

But they found out that the police could not intervene as the issue was deemed a matter between private parties.

Text conversations and PayNow transactions, plus a photo of the winning ticket were collated before heading to the authorities for help.

The post claimed that the woman had reached out to Singapore Pools directly, but was informed that the prize money will be disbursed to the person who holds the ticket.

In an update on the post, the rightful winner was supposedly looking for a debt collector to aid in retrieving the prize money.

The post also said the colleagues were at a loss as to how to console the woman.

Singapore Pools stated that they are unable to withhold the prize money from any person who shows up with a valid winning ticket.

Under our Game Rules, we have to honour prize payment to whoever presents a valid winning ticket. 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.

Top photo for illustration only via