Lottery Manhunt: Spain City Conducts Search for Missing Millionaire Winner
La Coruna, a city in Spain, is all agog. It's been desperately trying to find the winner of the lottery ticket that won the person 4.7 million euro ($6.3 million).
The ticket was bought a year ago for the scheduled June 30, 2012 lottery. The buyer either forgot s/he just bought a ticket or misplaced it all together. And on Tuesday, the Web site of La Coruna said the ticket, found in the town lottery office, is now officially part of the city's lost-and-found items along with cellphones, keys and wallets.
Another lottery customer, Manuel Reija Gonzalez, was the one who reportedly found the ticket and then handed it to the manager of the store.
"I'll be the first Spanish mayor who's searching for a millionaire not to ask for money but to give it," La Coruna Mayor Carlos Negreira joked in a statement.
The winning ticket has the numbers 10, 17, 24, 37, 40 and 43. However, fortune hunters beware. Authorities will scrutinise each person coming upfront to claim the pot money and ask where the ticket was bought and the time it was purchased. Talk about being grilled before the police for a crime you didn't commit.
If the city fails to locate the original buyer, Mr Gonzalez will be entitled to claim the prize money after two years.
Asked why didn't he just claimed the ticket as his, "I wouldn't be able to sleep," he told La Voz de Galicia.
Authorities are also thinking the lottery ticket buyer and millionaire winner could also have been a tourist.