Bar Owners Conned Lottery Winner Out of $12M

Bar Owners Conned Lottery Winner Out of $12M

A Valencia judge has sentenced a Spanish couple who planned to defraud a lottery winner of almost €11 million (US$12 million) to three years in prison.

Aside from the fact that they own a bar in Pedralba, a tiny town close to Valencia, the couple, who have not been named by Spanish media, were also ordered to reimburse the victim for the money that was stolen.

The victim, who remained anonymous, bought her monthly lottery tickets at the couple's bar, where she frequently went. As is customary among the regulars, she purchased three tickets for Spain's Lotería Nacional Father's Day draw on March 12, 2017, and returned them to the pub owners for safekeeping.

The Odd System

Every week, two of the three tickets the victim purchased would have the same number. 12,396 and 10,123. A random number would always be the third.

This week, she selected 39,813, which also happened to be the exact number that the pub owners and one of their friends selected on a combined ticket. Additionally, another frequent patron of the tavern selected the same number and gave their ticket to the proprietors.

Unusually, tickets with five-digit numbers ranging from 00000 to 99999 are used to enter Lotería Nacional drawings. Each ticket number is printed more than once, in various "series," because this model can only generate 100K unique numbers. Every series has a special number that serves as a kind of bonus ball.

Players must match the series number with the balls drawn and their ticket number in order to win the large prize (el gordo). Smaller prizes are awarded for tickets that match the winning number but not the series (bonus) number.

Forced to Split

All four players at the bar won 39,813 in the draw, which was held on March 18, 2017. The victim's ticket was the only one with the correct series number for the €14.8 million (US$16 million) jackpot, though. Each of the other two tickets brought in €130K.

The victim received a call from the couple inviting her to the pub. According to court documents, when she got there, they presented her the three winning tickets and locked the door to prevent anybody else from entering.

They acknowledged that she had won the prize, but they said it was impossible to determine who the true winner was because the tickets were mixed together.

The pair claimed that dividing the reward four ways would be the most equitable course of action. The victim consented, confused. The other two winners, who were not aware of the plan, were subsequently notified by the couple that the prize would be divided.

The victim signed a legal agreement that the couple had drafted with a lawyer detailing the four-way allocation of the awards.

The judge decided that the victim was entitled to the full award since she had been "led to believe that she did not know which ticket was the winner" after convicting the pair of fraud.

The victim's attorneys blasted the six-year case's duration as "remarkably excessive" given its "low complexity."