With a young man named Li from Hongkou District, Shanghai, China, he just went through a year of failure in both work and life. Just looking at his situation at the end of the year, with Tet approaching and not a single penny to his name, it’s clear how helpless he must feel as he cannot afford to decorate his home or buy new clothes.
Nevertheless, he still hopes to encounter a stroke of luck that could change his life, materializing his dream of becoming a millionaire in the last days of the year by playing scratch-off lottery tickets. He pretended that he was lending money, with the debtor promising to pay him back the next day, to justify his gambling. The young man even used his identification, bank card, and mobile phone as collateral to gain the shop owner’s trust.
Using this tactic for the second time at another shop, Li unfortunately encountered an old creditor. Caught red-handed, he could no longer deny it. When asked to pay for all the tickets, he confessed that he had no money left on him. He also whispered that, due to the end of the year and the approaching Tet, he had taken the risk hoping to win a prize.
It is reported that during two frenzied days of scratching tickets, Li spent a total of 26,000 Chinese Yuan (about nearly 90 million VND) on lottery tickets. In the end, his “project” went up in smoke, bringing him not only a huge debt but also a lost Tet as he was officially arrested for fraud and property appropriation.
When questioned, Li further revealed that he had lost all his capital over the past year and currently had no money left, no house, and no car. Despite trying to turn his life around with lottery tickets, he was unsuccessful.