Italian court freezes assets of five ex-lottery workers in €24m ticket scheme

Italy's Court of Auditors for Lazio and the Guardia di Finanza have frozen more than €25m in assets belonging to five former employees of a lottery concessionaire, according to a report. The five are accused of using privileged access to the company's internal systems to identify winning "Gratta e Vinci" scratchcards before they were distributed to the public. The case is now before an investigating judge. Lottomatica Holding is not accused of involvement in the scheme.

The freeze covers 25 properties, including luxury homes and apartments, as well as five vehicles and bank assets. The alleged frauds took place in 2020, when the suspects still held strategic positions at Lottomatica Holding, which operated the betting category under a state concession. Using credentials giving access to the company's servers, they reportedly tracked the distribution logistics of the most valuable tickets in the "Gratta e Vinci" line, with internal reports indicating the exact destination of each winning pack before delivery to retailers. The group therefore knew in which cities and shops the top prizes would be available.

To make tracing harder, the former employees did not buy the tickets themselves, according to the report. They passed the locations to relatives and acquaintances, who travelled to the indicated points to buy the tickets, a strategy intended to conceal the origin of the gains and avoid immediate suspicion from the authorities. The Lazio prosecutor's office identified four fraudulent operations over the period investigated: in two, the redeemed tickets were worth €7m each, and in the other two the value per ticket was €5m, for a total of €24m diverted, according to the office's findings.

The proceeds were converted into high-end property and financial-market investments, and the atypical transactions raised alerts among the authorities, which began cross-checking data on the identity of the winners and their proximity to the concessionaire's staff. The asset freeze is intended to guarantee full compensation to the public purse if the defendants are convicted at the end of the proceedings.