Suspected thief of winning scratch card stopped at Rome airport

Rome’s main airport border police seems to have stopped a Naples tobacco shop owner, who is suspected of running off with a customer’s winning game ticket.

The shop owner was trying to board a flight to the Canary Islands, news reports said.

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As per the LaPresse news agency on Sunday, the man did not have the filched card worth €500,000 (£429,000) with him, but he did have a plane ticket for Fuerteventura.

The man was wanted for investigation of suspected theft. He has not been identified. He allegedly snatched the ticket and ran off with it on his scooter after the customer on Friday asked the shop in a working-class district of Naples to verify the win, which was the top prize.

An elderly woman, who had purchased two “scratch and win” cards, asked a shop employee to verify the win. The employee then gave the card to one of the shop’s owners for making the final check, reports said.

But instead, the owner allegedly kept the card and raced off on his scooter. The investigators are still looking for the card.

However, the authorities at the Italian tax office, which runs the “scratch and win” operation, have frozen the entire block of card numbers that were distributed to the tobacco shop to prevent anyone cashing in the card.