In Grasbrunn, south-east of Munich, an attempt to hijack a winning lottery ticket was foiled, but the case still leaves a great unknown: the real beneficiary of the sum remains unobtainable. In April 2024, a customer showed up at a gas station counter to have his ticket checked. According to the Bavarian lottery, the 31-year-old ticket clerk, identified as Patrick D., understood by scanning the ticket that it was the jackpot. Instead of informing the player, he told him that there was "no gain". The client left without his receipt, and the ticket remained in the employee's possession.

• Ticket gain: €1 477 777

For three months, no action was reported. Then, in July 2024, Patrick D. presented himself at the Bavarian lottery headquarters in Munich to try to cash the sum. That's when the scheme collapsed. Internal controls revealed inconsistencies. Thanks to the ticket numbering system, the lottery was able to establish that the winning ticket had been recorded precisely at the point of sale where the cashier worked. The rule is clear: employees are not allowed to play or present tickets from their own institution.

The lottery spokesman, Verena Ober, confirmed the manoeuvre: "The customer [...] was wrongly informed that no gain had been made". Internally, the alert was deemed serious enough to be transmitted promptly to the competent authorities. Faced with the evidence gathered, the employee acknowledged the facts. He was prosecuted for fraud and sentenced to 15 months' suspended imprisonment.

Beyond the aborted attempt, the case highlights the vulnerability of players who entrust the verification of their receipts to a third party, even when this is common in point of sale. The scenario here is clear: a confident customer gives his ticket to an employee for a check, the employee finds the gain and, against all ethics and against the rules, claims the opposite. The customer leaves again, thinking he has not won anything, while the employee keeps the precious ticket. The sequel was played a few months later, when the cashier attempted to cash the sum at the seat, encountering controls designed to prevent precisely this type of abuse.

The discovery did not end all the questions. Because if the hijacking was prevented, the lottery states that "the winner could not be identified". In other words, the person who has, without knowing it, won the jackpot is so far unknown. The priority of the investigators is now to trace the route of the ticket, from the point-of-sale check-in to the moment it was presented at headquarters, in order to find the real beneficiary. The purpose of this reconstitution is to shed light on one essential point: how and under what circumstances the ticket was permanently found in the hands of the employee, without the player claiming restitution or following the trail.

The file is based on some certainty. It is known that the incident occurred in April 2024 at a gas station in Grasbrunn, and that the employee then waited until July to appear at the lottery headquarters in Munich. It is known, above all, that the winning ticket corresponds to a gain of EUR 1 477 777, an amount that does not escape the reinforced controls applied to such lots. These checks precisely identified the origin of the ticket, revealing the contradiction between its point of registration and the professional identity of the person who presented himself to cash the sum.

The 15-month conditional sentence reflects the seriousness of the facts and the public's confidence in the lottery scheme. If the attempt to capture has failed, it underlines the importance of internal verification mechanisms, such as ticket traceability and strict separation between staff and players. In this case, the simple correlation between the point of sale and the employee was sufficient to trigger the alert and uncover the alleged fraud.

But history is not closed. The challenge now is to find the person who originally validated this ticket in Grasbrunn and who was not informed of his gain. Without it, the jackpot of 1 477 777 euros remains, for all useful purposes, without an identified holder. Investigators strive to go back through the steps, from the records and chronology of events, to determine where, when and how the ticket changed hands. The objective is clear: to give back to the winner what belongs to him, and thus to close a case which, part of a gas station counter, ended up playing at the lottery headquarters, under the eye of the controllers and then of justice.

At this stage, no additional information was provided on the person sought. But the lottery was certain: if the fraud had been successful, a player would have been deprived of a considerable gain, thanks to an abuse of trust. The attempt failed, the manoeuvre was recognized, the sanction fell. It remains to give a name, and a face, to the true winner of the draw.