[Getty Images Bank]
[Getty Images Bank]

A lottery ticket seller who concealed a customer's winning ticket has been sentenced to prison.

A court in A Coruña, in northwestern Spain, sentenced the seller to three years and six months in prison on charges of aggravated fraud for stealing a customer's winning lottery ticket 14 years ago, Reuters reported Friday.

The court found that in 2012, the seller was asked by a customer to check several tickets the customer had purchased. After confirming that one of the tickets had won a large prize, the seller deliberately told the customer it had not won. The lottery was a six-number draw from 1 to 49, with a jackpot of 47 billion euros (about $54.4 billion). At the exchange rate at the time, the prize came to about 6.8 billion won (about $4.45 million).

The seller later attempted to claim the winnings by telling lottery authorities he had found the ticket by chance at his store. Authorities withheld the payout and retained the ticket while they worked to verify the true owner.

According to the court, the seller repeatedly demanded the prize money over the following eight years, insisting he was the rightful claimant.

At trial, the seller maintained his innocence, arguing that no one had come forward to claim the ticket he said he had found and that he had legitimately sought the winnings.

The court rejected that account, citing records from the seller's machine showing that the winning ticket had been scanned alongside several other tickets at the same time. The number combinations on those tickets were subsequently reissued for the following week's draw — evidence the court said placed the victim at the store with the seller when the scan occurred.

Police opened an investigation in 2018 and conducted a parallel probe to identify the ticket's true owner. More than 300 people came forward claiming to be the rightful owner, but none of the claims held up. Investigators traced the ticket's purchase history and identified a local resident who had long bought tickets using the winning number combination, but confirmed that person had died in 2014.

The court ordered the prize money paid to the heirs of the deceased owner in accordance with the terms of the estate.

The ruling is not final, and the seller may appeal to a higher court.


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