A lottery ticket seller has been sentenced in Spain to three and a half years in prison for defrauding a man who won a 4.7 million euro jackpot in 2012 and taking away his prize, Reuters reported, citing court documents, BTA reported.
A court in the northwestern Spanish city of La Coruna said the seller realized the customer had won a significant amount when he asked him to check the numbers on his ticket, but deliberately deceived him by telling him that none of them had come up.
The seller then tried to cash in the winnings, claiming to have found the winning ticket in his shop.
However, the local lottery office did not pay out the winnings and held the ticket while it tried to identify its owner. However, court documents show that the ticket seller tried repeatedly to claim the winnings over a period of eight years.
The rightful owner of the winning ticket died in 2014, but the court ordered that the entire winnings be paid to his heirs.
The court found the seller guilty of fraud. The decision is not final and can be appealed to the country's Supreme Court.