On 26 October 2026, Italian authorities seized €25 million ($28 million) in assets in a fraud case involving Gratta e Vinci scratch-off tickets, according to a report by GamblingNews, the source for all details below. No second source we checked has confirmed it.
The suspects are five former Lottomatica employees who allegedly abused their system access to secure jackpot wins.
The five allegedly used a custom program to identify four winning tickets with a combined value of €24 million ($26.8 million). The program also showed which retail outlets those tickets had been shipped to. Relatives and acquaintances were then allegedly sent to the shops to buy them.
No ticket was physically tampered with: the suspects had IT expertise and logged in with their own corporate credentials.
The seizure covers 25 properties across several Italian provinces, along with cars, motorcycles and financial accounts, and, per the report, a court still has to decide whether to uphold these preventive measures.
The accusations are unproven, and the five are presumed innocent.
On 26 October, Casino.org published a story about alleged gambling fraud in Italy, but it covers a different case: a slot machine skimming ring in Cosenza province involving 145 machines, 15 suspects and an alleged ADM insider. That report does not mention scratchcards, Lottomatica or the €25 million seizure.
It is not known when the four alleged jackpots were claimed, or whether Lottomatica has commented on the accusations. A prosecutors' statement or a second independent report would show whether the details above hold.
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