Italian news reports said that border police at Rome’s main airport prevented the owner of a tobacco shop in Naples who was suspected of running away with a customer’s winning game ticket and boarding a flight to the Canary Islands.
The LaPresse news agency said on Sunday that the man did not have a stolen card worth 500,000 euros (£429,000), but he did have a ticket to Fuerteventura.
The man is unidentified and is wanted on suspicion of theft. He allegedly snatched the ticket and ran away on his scooter after a customer asked a shop in the working-class district of Naples to verify the winning on Friday.
An old woman bought two “scratch cards” and asked the clerk to verify that she won the prize. Italian news reports said the employee then handed the card to one of the shopkeepers for final inspection. But he allegedly kept the card and rode his scooter through Naples.
The Italian tax authorities responsible for the “scratch” operation have frozen the entire set of card numbers distributed to tobacco shops to prevent anyone from cashing them out.
Investigators are still looking for game cards.
