The Case of the Altered Lottery Ticket
Two men sue the Great Northern Express Company for $3,750, alleging their winning lottery ticket was tampered with in transit.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
A lottery ticket, which won a capital prize of $15,000 in the Mexican lottery, has sparked a lawsuit in superior court. Ford bought one-fourth of the ticket and gave it to R. Johnson, a patrol driver, for safekeeping. Johnson sent the ticket via the Great Northern express office to M. Ottens & Co. in Chicago. Later, Frank Adams, a railroad brakeman, appeared with a ticket claiming to be a winner. When Johnson finally received his C.O.D. package back, the ticket had clearly been altered—the number changed from 933 to 938—and a note declared it had only won a consolation prize. Johnson and Ford suspect the express company employees replaced their winning ticket with a forgery and are suing for the full $3,750 prize money they were promised.
“The two speculators were convinced that they had been bunkoed, but by whom they could not tell; all they knew was that they wanted their $3,750.”
This dispute over a mid-1890s courier service highlights the perennial distrust of intermediaries when high-stakes money or digital assets change hands. Today's e-commerce disputes over lost packages and 'missing' funds echo this early struggle to hold shipping corporations accountable for the contents of their parcels.
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