Who has rights to winnings of lottery if ticket bought with stolen credit card?

Question

Inspired by this story:

If a thief uses a stolen credit card to purchase a lottery ticket, which turns out to be the winning ticket - can the card owner claim any part of/whole winnings?

Answers of US or UK law welcome.

Answer 1

florida

Reference

Here in Florida I do not think they have the ability to trace a particular credit card purchase to a particular lottery ticket. That is a CC transaction could show a purchase at a gas station or grocery store and perhaps a lottery ticket, but not lottery ticket X that was indeed a winner. It could just as likely be lottery ticket Y which was not a winner.

But from the rules:

24.115.1.c

No prize may be paid arising from claimed tickets that are stolen...

or

24.115.1.g

No prize shall be paid upon a ticket purchased or sold in violation of this act or to any person who is prohibited from purchasing a lottery ticket

Basically no one would get the prize in Florida, it would be added to the "unclaimed prize pool", of which 80% goes to fund education, 20% is added into the general prize pool and can be used for a variety of purposes.

So if something similar happened in Florida, the person with the ticket should just claim the prize and keep their mouth shut. If they advertised it was purchased illegally, the State lottery office would probably deny payment and use the funds as outlined in section 2.

Edit in response to this comments: The rules seem quick to deny payment and put the money in the unclaimed bucket. I feel that either they would claim the ticket was indeed stolen or the person was prohibited from buying it. Either way the result is the same.

Answer 2

I don't think so.

I believe there's a general principle that the victim of theft is only entitled to restitution of the item stolen or something of similar value (e.g. the cash value of the stolen item).

If someone steals your car and uses it to bring groceries home from the supermarket, you can demand return of the car, but you don't get the groceries.

If the thief used the stolen item to produce income, the victim is not entitled to that income. However, the government may confiscate it through asset forfeiture.

However, one of the uses of asset forfeiture is to compensate victims. I suppose the victim could ask for a share of these winnings, but I wouldn't give them high hopes.

Answer 3

In the UK a thief used a stolen card to bet on horses, one bet was a winner, and the betting shop paid the winnings into the bank account of the card that was used, as they do for all non-cash bets according to their T&Cs.

The theft victim had some extra money, the thief was unknown and had very good reasons not to go to court. That’s what happened. What should have happened legally is not known.