Shop owner ‘ran away with customer’s winning lottery ticket’

When you hand over a lottery ticket in a shop to be checked over, you trust that they will give you the ticket back if you have won some money – but this apparently wasn’t the case for one woman in Italy.

A tobacco shop owner allegedly stole the customer’s winning lottery ticket and then attempted to flee the country in the ultimate betrayal – but not before police detained him.

Time reported that police tracked down the man at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport on Sunday as he attempted to board a flight to the Canary Islands, though the winning lottery ticket has since mysteriously disappeared.

Sadly, authorities were unable to locate the ticket after searching the man at the airport.

It all started when a woman in her late 60s had purchased two “scratch and win” lottery cards at the shop in question. She later returned to the shop to get her tickets checked over, and as it turned out she had won 500,000 euros ($580,000), according to the Associated Press, on one of her winning tickets.

After the woman gave the ticket to the shop employee, they then passed the ticket onto the shop owner to get further verification – that is until he allegedly decided to claim the money for himself and fled on his scooter with the winning ticket.

Since being detained, Time reported that the man has been released without having to pay bail.

Though action has been taken against the shop by the Italian tax office that runs the lottery. They have prevented the owner from cashing in the winnings by blocking the lottery ticket numbers sold at the shop.

Currently, authorities are on the search for the missing winning ticket.

Perhaps, the tobacco shop owner should take a leaf out of shop owner Maunish Shah’s book after he found a winning lottery ticket in the his shop’s bin and gave it back to customer Lea Rose Fiega, who won $1 million dollars.