Italy's Audit Court Freezes €25m From Five Ex-Employees Accused of Steering Four Gratta e Vinci Jackpots

Prosecutors at the Corte dei conti allege that five former staff of the scratchcard concessionaire used their system access to find four winning tickets worth €24 million and had relatives and friends buy them. The claim is the State's, not the company's: prizes that chance might have left unclaimed would have stayed with the Treasury.

• The Guardia di Finanza in Rome has seized more than €25 million in property, vehicles and funds from five former employees of Italy's Gratta e Vinci concessionaire, under a precautionary order from the Lazio section of the Corte dei conti, Italy's court of auditors
• The five are accused of using their access credentials to identify four winning tickets, two €7 million first prizes and two worth €5 million, which relatives and friends then allegedly bought at the shops they were shipped to
• The audit prosecutors put the damage to the Agenzia delle Dogane e dei Monopoli (ADM) at €25,067,224, arguing the prizes might otherwise never have been claimed; the concessionaire is described as entirely unconnected to the alleged conduct
• The tickets were won between 2015 and 2019 and first surfaced in a 2020 criminal investigation; the five contested the allegations, a judge must now decide whether the freeze stands, and nothing has been proven
• The case lands as the government weighs an early tender for the scratchcard concession, which Brightstar's joint venture holds until 30 September 2028 and which took €12.9 billion in 2025

Rome's Audit Prosecutors Want €25m Back for Four Scratchcards They Say Were Never Left to Chance

Officers of the Guardia di Finanza's Rome provincial command executed a precautionary seizure order (sequestro conservativo) on 23 October covering assets and funds worth more than €25 million, according to the force's statement, carried in full by Jamma and reported by Sky TG24. The Jurisdictional Section of the Corte dei conti for Lazio issued the order at the request of its regional prosecutor's office, to secure the sum the prosecutors say is owed to ADM as the damaged public body. The five were also served with a summons to trial before the audit court.

According to the statement, the five former employees of a State concessionaire for the Gratta e Vinci game used their access credentials to manipulate the company's servers and identify four winning tickets: two carrying the €7 million first prize and two worth €5 million each. Relatives and friends of the alleged fraudsters then bought those tickets at the shops the concessionaire had sent them to. Milano Finanza and Open report that the investigators believe the group built purpose-made software, and that the inquiry was directed by Deputy Prosecutor General Eleonora Lener.

The prosecutors first set out their case in an invito a dedurre, a formal notice inviting a response, served in March. The five's defences did not overcome the allegations, the statement says, so the office filed the summons together with the request for the freeze. Open reported in March that the €25,067,224 claimed includes damage to the public administration's image as well as lost revenue; the four prizes come to €24 million.

The seized assets are 25 property units, including flats, small villas, garages and cellars, in the provinces of Rome, Viterbo, Treviso, Taranto, Grosseto and Reggio Calabria, plus five cars and motorcycles and financial holdings. A designated judge will decide in chambers whether to confirm, modify or revoke the freeze. Under the presumption of innocence, the statement notes, liability can be established only by a final judgment of the audit court.

The Same Four Tickets Surfaced in a 2020 Criminal Inquiry

In October 2020 the Guardia di Finanza, acting for the Rome public prosecutor, carried out seizures against 12 people under investigation for aggravated fraud, unauthorised access to computer systems, receiving and self-laundering, according to Il Fatto Quotidiano and ANSA. They described two €5 million Maxi Miliardario first prizes bought in Milan and Brescia province in 2015 and €7 million Super Cash tickets bought in Foggia in 2017 and Cremona in 2019. Both put the total at €27 million at the time, although the four prizes listed add up to €24 million.

International Game Technology (IGT) said then that it and its subsidiary Lottomatica Holding had suspended four employees under investigation and had cooperated with the authorities, according to Il Fatto. That is why some trade accounts speak of current and former employees; the audit case concerns five former employees. The 2026 statements do not mention the criminal case, and we could not establish its status.

The Guardia di Finanza does not name the concessionaire; Open names the five as former employees of Lottomatica Holding. The concession has been held since 2010 by Lotterie Nazionali S.r.l., a joint venture in which Lottomatica Holding held 64% at the time of its 2017 extension, alongside Scientific Games and Arianna 2001, a company linked to the tobacconists' federation, according to Scientific Games and the magazine Vita. IGT's lottery business now trades as Brightstar. The Lottomatica brand went to Gamenet with IGT's Italian consumer businesses in 2021, according to Lottery Daily; that company, now Lottomatica Group and merging with Cirsa, is not the scratchcard concessionaire. We found no new statement from Brightstar or Lotterie Nazionali.

The Treasury's Claim Rests on a Subtle Theory of Loss

The concessionaire, not the State, paid these prizes. The prosecutors argue that the alleged insiders removed the element of chance: without them, the four top prizes might have gone unclaimed, and unclaimed money flows to ADM as part of the State's take, as Open explains. That makes it a case about lost public revenue rather than a private fraud claim, which is why the concessionaire is treated as a bystander. The likely point of contention is the counterfactual: the judge will have to weigh how likely it was that four headline prizes would never have been claimed. If the freeze survives, it signals that an insider who decides which customer wins can be liable to the State, not only to the operator.

Integrity Is the Product, and the Tender Will Test It

Instant lotteries took €12.9 billion in 2025 through about 52,500 points of sale, according to the Treasury's first report on public gaming as summarised by Avviso Pubblico, and Jamma's analysis puts the State's take from Gratta e Vinci at about €1.77 billion. The €24 million at issue is small against that, but the game sells on the promise that nobody knows where the big prizes are. The concession was extended without a tender in 2017 for €800 million; the government committed in July 2025 to bring a new tender forward, according to Il Messaggero, and it remains an option for the 2027 Budget Law. Bidders can expect to be asked how they control staff access to prize data, and this case gives ADM a concrete example to write into the terms.

The freeze is precautionary and the five have yet to have their case heard. What the audit prosecutors have made clear is that they treat insider knowledge of where the prizes are as a loss to the public purse, and will pursue it years after the tickets were cashed.