Scratch, win, run: Italian cops seek man who snatched ticket

ROME — Italian police on Saturday were hunting for a Naples tobacco shop owner who allegedly ran off on a motor scooter with a customer’s “scratch and win” game card that had clinched the top prize of 500,000 euros ($650,000 Cdn), Italian news reports said.

A day earlier, a woman in her late 60s had purchased two of the game cards at her local shop in a working-class neighbourhood of the southern port city. The first card was a loser. But the second was the big win.

The customer handed it to a shop employee to doublecheck.

That employee in turn passed it to one of the smoke shop’s owners for a final check. Instead, he held on to it, grabbed his helmet, hopped on the scooter and raced off.

To prevent the alleged thief from cashing in, the Italian tax office, which runs the “scratch and win,” froze the entire block of cards that had been distributed to the tobacco shop.