Spanish Lottery Vendor Sentenced to Prison for Stealing Customer's 6.8 Billion Won Winning Ticket

Asked to check winning ticket, lied it was not a winner
Tried to claim prize, insisting he found ticket in store

A lottery ticket vendor in Spain, who was put on trial for intercepting a customer's winning ticket and taking the prize money 14 years ago, has been sentenced to prison.

On June 13, Yonhap News, citing Spanish media, reported that the court in A Coruña, in northwest Spain, found the lottery vendor, identified as Mr. A, guilty of aggravated fraud and sentenced him to three years and six months in prison the previous day.

In 2012, Mr. A was asked by a customer to check several lottery tickets for winnings. Upon confirming that one of the tickets had won a large prize, he deceived the customer by claiming the ticket was not a winner. The ticket in question was for 'Primitiva,' a lottery game where six numbers are chosen from 1 to 49, and the prize amounted to 47 million euros (approximately 6.8 billion won at the 2012 exchange rate).

Mr. A later claimed he had discovered the winning ticket at his store and attempted to collect the prize from the lottery authorities, but his request was denied. The authorities withheld payment until the true owner could be identified. Throughout the trial, Mr. A maintained his story, insisting that he had found the ticket by chance on the counter while alone in the shop, and, since no owner appeared, he believed he rightfully claimed the prize and was not guilty.

The court tracked the records of the vendor's terminal and revealed that the winning ticket was scanned together with several other tickets at the same time. Additionally, it was determined that the number combinations for these tickets were issued for the following week's draw, indicating that the victim had been present with Mr. A at the time.

Separately from the trial, police launched an investigation in 2018 to locate the true owner of the lottery ticket. Over 300 people came forward claiming to be the owner, but all of these claims were proven false. Police traced the ticket's purchase history and eventually identified a local resident who had consistently bought tickets with the winning number combination. This man was found to have died in 2014, apparently unaware of his win. The deceased man's wife and daughter attended Mr. A's trial.

The court ordered that the prize money be distributed to the heirs according to the victim’s will. As this is not a final ruling, the case may be appealed to a higher court.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.