Spanish Lottery ‘Good Samaritan’ Faces Prison for Fraud

An a Coruna, Spain, drawing ticket vendor who made headlines around the domain inward 2013 for an manifest deed of benignity was inward fact trying to defraud a €4.7 jillion (US$5.2 million) winner, Spanish prosecutors say.

Eleven years ago, Manuel Reija Gonzalez was feted as a “good Samaritan.” That’s after he claimed to make found a winning drawing ticket while cleansing out a lost belongings package and ran it through the digital scanner at his store. When its time value was revealed, Reija readiness out on a military mission to regain the confessedly winner, or so he claimed.

I never for a moment thought around keeping it because i wanted to be capable to sleep wellspring at night with a shed light on conscience,” he told the BBC inward 2013.

But he was hoodwinking the world’s media inwards a adjure to claim the award himself, according to prosecutors.

Big Bluff

When presented with the ticket past its rightful owner quintuplet months earlier, he told them that the value was simply o'er €1, which he paid out, according to prosecutors. He and so conspired with his brother, who worked for the drawing company, to acquire his custody on the loot, they claim.

Reija was gambling that the existent victor wouldn’t live found, inwards which case, below Spanish people law, he would get to dungeon the money after ii years.

As the track down began, drawing officials kept the details private of when or where the just the ticket had been purchased, so they could essay the claims of those purporting to live the winner. There were 317 claimants, none of whom turned come out to be genuine.

Meanwhile, investigators had become suspicious of Reija’s story and resolved to rails downwardly the tangible winner.

Because many people plectron the same lottery numbers hebdomad in and week come out and few people were potential to share the same numbers, investigators trawled through and through lottery records to place fine sales that had used the same numbers as the winning ticket.

Winner Found

They discovered that the go down of numbers was purchased hebdomadary in group A Coruna, except around the Christmas and Easter holidays. That’s when the numbers would seem inwards popular holiday destinations the likes of the Costa del Sol and in Mallorca.

We reached the close that this was someone with plenty of unloose time who took the Yuletide and Easter holidays someplace warm, probably a senior citizen,” chief inspector Jose Manuel Lopez told The Guardian.

Investigators and so contacted IMSERSO, a state-run agency that organizes vacations for senior citizens, and were able to caterpillar tread knock down a woman whose movements corresponded with the fine purchases. They dictated the woman was the widow of the real winner, and she testament live eventually getting the money.

Reija, meanwhile, is sounding at sextuplet years in prison for fraudulence and money laundering.

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