KEY POINTS:
PARIS - Two Parisian tobacconists from the Rue des Entrepreneurs admitted yesterday that they had taken their street name too literally.
They, and a friend, cheated a customer out of a 35.5m Euros (NZ$62m) win on the Euro Millions lottery last month.
The shop keepers told the trusting customer, a 30 years old accountant, that his tickets were all losers.
In fact, two of them, with exactly the same permutation of numbers, had won the weekly jackpot.
The tobacconists pretended to throw away the tickets.
A few days later, they asked an unemployed friend to pose as the "winner" in return for a 1.5m Euro cut.
He successfully claimed the prize but his bank grew suspicious when he transferred most of the money to another account.
The French national lottery company, La Francaise des Jeux, asked for an investigation by the French internal security service, the Renseignements Generaux (RG), which also polices gaming.
The RG studied the pattern of Euro Millions tickets bought at the Tabac in the Rue des Entrepreneurs in the 15th arrondissement.
They discovered that the winning numbers had been played regularly before the big win on 11 May - but also again afterwards.
This suggested that the winner was not aware that his regular line had hit the jackpot.
The shopkeepers, named only as Reginald and Brigitte C, aged 57, were arrested earlier this week.
So was their friend.
All three initially denied the scam but confessed yesterday.
They have been placed under formal investigation for "conspiracy to commit fraud".
The jackpot winner, who has asked for no publicity, had no idea that he was a millionaire until police called at his address two weeks ago.
He will received his 35,565,110 Euros winnings once they have been released by the bank and the judicial authorities in about one month's time.
The young man told investigators that he always bought his tickets at the same shop and trusted the owners absolutely.
He never checked for the winning numbers himself but always handed his tickets to the tobacconist to run through the Euro Millions computer.
The shop owners knew that there had been a huge double win on tickets bought from them.
Reginald C even gave interviews to the press in which he said: "If I won that much, I would close the shop tomorrow and complete my chalet in Savoie." He, his wife, and friend now face up to ten years in jail.
- INDEPENDENT
