'Good Samaritan' lottery ticket seller waiting years for $5.6 million prize now faces jail
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LOTTERY store salesman Manuel Reija found an El Gordo lottery ticket left on the counter in his licensed lottery store in Galicia, Spain.
This began a long journey of waiting for the helpful store owner and eventually ended with him being charged with jail time.
“I usually throw away the tickets I see lying around but this one surprised me because it was very well preserved, as if it had been ironed,” Manuel Reija recalled.
Ticket Check
He said that he decided to check the ticket in the store's lottery checking machine, "just out of curiosity."
It was worth €4.7 million (US$5.6M).
But the story doesn’t end there.
He was to experience attention from the law after suspicions were raised. More on that shortly.
“When the prize came up on the screen my legs went wobbly. My face must have been a picture. I checked it twice, three times before I realized what I was holding in my hands.”
Delays Continue
And over 10 years later, Reija was still waiting for the owner of the giant lottery ticket to step forward.
“I am not thinking about that money,” Mr Reija told The Telegraph at the time. “Whatever happens I will carry on working in the store.”
Mr Reija had taken the mislaid lucky ticket to A Coruña’s branch of the state lottery administration.
He was told that an official process had to be followed in order to give the original purchaser a chance to reclaim their number.
When a notification was eventually published in the Galician region’s official gazette, more than 200 people pressed their claim.
But none managed to convince the authorities that it really was their ticket, unable to prove the purchase or recall any peculiarities or stains.
In September 2015 the claim period expired, but Mr Reija was still waiting while a reported 10 lawsuits brought by people claiming the ticket were presented.
“Court decisions normally take a long time in this country”, sighed Mr Reija.
The charges against Manuel Reija González, who worked as a ticket seller in the north-western Spanish city of A Coruña, allege that he defrauded the rightful owner of their substantial lottery winnings.
The story began in June 2012 when a significant lottery prize drawing caught the attention of the nation.
The unclaimed winning ticket was worth a staggering sum, and it quickly became the focus of media attention.
At the time, Reija was celebrated for his intentions to locate the rightful ticket holder instead of pocketing the prize money himself.
However, authorities grew suspicious of Reija's account of events, prompting an investigation into the matter. The local authorities started a wide-ranging search to identify the true owner of the winning ticket.
An astonishing 317 people from across Spain came forward, each claiming to be the rightful winner. Regrettably, all of these claims turned out to be false.
As suspicions mounted, a judge ordered the police to probe Reija for possible fraud.
Spain boasts various lotteries, and in this case, the spotlight fell on "la Primitiva," a lottery held twice a week. Participants select six numbers from a pool of 49, and if no one wins, the jackpot rolls over to the next draw.
During their investigation, the police made a significant breakthrough. They discovered that a person in A Coruña had consistently used the same combination of numbers over an extended period.
This identical combination also surfaced at lottery offices in popular holiday destinations, such as the Costa del Sol and Mallorca.
Chief Inspector López commented, "We reached the conclusion that this was someone with plenty of free time who took the Christmas and Easter holidays somewhere warm, probably a pensioner."
Through their diligent work, the investigators traced the movements of an elderly woman using the state body Imserso, which arranges holidays for senior citizens.
Her movements corresponded with the ticket sales, and it was eventually revealed that she was the wife of the original ticket purchaser, who had sadly passed away in 2014.
At a preliminary hearing in A Coruña, the prosecution demanded a six-year prison sentence for Manuel Reija González, alleging that he attempted to cash in the ticket on six separate occasions.
As well, charges of money laundering and deceit were brought against Reija and his brother. The prosecution argued that the prize money should rightfully go to the widow and daughter of the genuine winner.
For their remarkable work in identifying the true ticket holder, the investigating officers were awarded the police merit medal for their role in unraveling this complex case.
SOURCE: The Guardian
