Bag thief On Spain’s Costa Blanca snatched a bag containing a winning lottery ticket
ON December 19 last year, while Remedios Garcia was lunching with two friends in Novelda her handbag was stolen.
It contained €950 in cash, her car keys, credit cards, ID and a ticket for the national lottery on December 22, the most important of the year.
“I hadn’t even noticed that the bag had gone until I visited to get my mobile to require a photograph with my friends,” Remedios told Spanish police.
I freaked out and began crying, brooding about everything that had been taken.”
She reported the theft to the Guardia Civil, listing everything in her bag, including the lottery ticket whose number – 6095 – she knew as she’d been buying it for the last 10 years.
Worse was to return three days after the theft when the amount came up within the Christmas Lottery. Remedios should have won €125,000 but instead, it was cashed in by the thief.
With only the restaurant’s blurry CCTV images to figure with, the Guardia Civil eventually traced the thief, a 52-year-old Peruvian with an in-depth police record to Alzira (Valencia).
He was living in an apartment that he allegedly bought with the lottery winnings that properly belonged to Remedios but although charged, he has now been released and awaits trial.