The initial euphoria of the moment made it seem like they had won 500,000 euros with a scratch card, but a month after the ticket that divided a couple in Carsoli, in the province of L’Aquila, Italy—with the woman disappearing to pocket the winnings herself—came the bitter discovery.
The scratch card, the spark that blew the relationship apart, was not a winner at all. It was the fault of a "43" mistaken for a "13," the very number missing from the prize. Even removing the top part of the number would have been enough to limit the family saga to one of the most traditional lost tickets, missing by just one digit.
The story from Carsoli made headlines across Italy, appearing in all the newspapers. On International Women's Day, March 8, the man showed up at his partner's house without mimosa flowers, but with a scratch card. Together, they scratched it at the bar, with a (clear, according to the man) agreement that if they won, the prize would be split.
And the numbers were indeed lucky: 47, 29, 50, and… 13. Unbelievable, the woman burst into celebrations with her beloved, then showed the same ticket to the bartender, asking him to confirm it was indeed the 500,000-euro jackpot.
Making the same mistake, he confirmed everything. Determined to enrich her account, the woman is suspected of depositing the ticket at the bank and disappearing. This prompted her lover, with whom she had recently started living, to file a complaint with the Guardia di Finanza to "clarify the circumstances of the situation."
The cold shower for the woman came after inspection by the Customs and Monopolies Agency. By scratching the box correctly, as reported by Il Centro, the agents realized the ticket was worth zero euros. Standard procedure for high-amount winnings requires tickets to be deposited at a bank or sent to the Rome Prizes Office for verification.
It was precisely this step that silenced the woman's cries of joy. With the assessment from the Monopolies Agency, all disputes automatically collapsed: no money, no split, no legal battle. As for the fate of a couple that until March 8 seemed very close, the Monopolies Agency cannot determine anything.