A Spanish lottery seller who concealed a customer's winning ticket 14 years ago and tried to claim the prize has been sentenced to prison. The winner had already passed away, but the court ordered the large sum returned to the bereaved family.
According to Reuters and Spanish local media Wednesday, a court in A Coruña, northwestern Spain, sentenced the lottery seller, who was charged with aggravated fraud, to three years and six months in prison.
According to the court, the seller was asked by a customer in 2012 to check whether several lottery tickets had won. During this process, the seller confirmed that one ticket had won a large prize but lied, saying it "did not win," and then took the ticket.
The ticket was for "Primitiva," a Spanish lottery in which players match six numbers out of 1 to 49. The prize amounted to about 4.7 million euros at the time (about 6.8 billion won at the 2012 exchange rate).
The seller later claimed to have found the ticket by chance at the store and requested the prize from lottery authorities. However, the authorities withheld payment until the true owner could be identified.
During the trial, the seller maintained his innocence. He claimed that while alone in the store he found the ticket at the counter, and that since the owner did not appear, he had legitimately claimed the prize.
But the court did not accept this. Sales machine records obtained by investigators showed that the ticket in question had been scanned along with several other tickets. The court also found that the customer had been present with the seller at the time, based on evidence including the fact that the number combinations checked together were reissued unchanged for the following week's draw.
Police launched an investigation in 2018 to find the actual owner of the winning ticket. During the investigation, about 300 people claimed to be the true owner, but all were false.
Police then traced the ticket's purchase history and found a local resident who had bought lottery tickets with the same number combination for years. However, he had already passed away in 2014. The bereaved family reportedly testified that he had not even known during his lifetime that he had won a large lottery prize.
The deceased man's wife and daughter attended the trial, and the court ordered that the prize be paid to the heirs in accordance with the victim's will.
However, the ruling is not final. The seller may appeal to a higher court.
