This is made even worse by the legal position in the UK concerning lost lottery tickets where they are treated similar to cash – if a ticket is lost then the person who finds it and has it in their possession, as opposed to the purchaser, will be legally entitled to the prize money – finders keepers as you will.
Of course this rule does not apply if the winning ticket was obtained by theft or fraud but for some people the risk of being caught out is worth the chance at taking a life-changing prize for themselves! There are a few steps you can take to avoid being the victim of a lottery theft. You should always know the basic rules of any lottery that you are playing, including how big the prize is for each different combination or tier of winning numbers. You can also better protect yourself in the case of a lost or stolen ticket by always signing the back and remembering to keep the receipt to help support a claim for legal ownership.
Recent EuroMillions Superdraw winner Ianthe Fullagar hid her winning lottery ticket in her bra until she could redeem the prize, for fear of losing it!
An even better solution is playing the lotto online since this effectively removes all question of legal ownership of the ticket - any prize money will simply belong to the owner of the account, because there is no physical ticket there is no chance of losing it or having it stolen.
Playing lottery online also means that you cannot forget to redeem a winning ticket within the deadline. Different lotteries have various time periods when prizes must be claimed within or the money gets donated to charity, most typically 180 days by the UK National Lottery.
It seems unbelievable but each year scores of winning lottery tickets, sometimes worth £1,000,000 or more go unclaimed, likely because people threw them away or simply forgot to check!
(source:https://www.lottoland.co.uk/magazine/the-million-dollar-lottery-steal.html)