Wednesday 24 December 2008

The Peschici Lottery win 1998

Domenico Lamargese owns the Mille Cose, Peschici's only newspaper shop.
In 1998 he came up with a system which involved 99 people taking a €20 share - the Italian lottery was on its eleventh rollover week and on 31st Oct 1998 the syndicate had the only winning line scooping the 63 billion lira jackpot.
In the two months before the cheque was presented at Christmas 10 years ago it had accrued another 306 million lira in interest (€180,000)
With the 100 winners all being from the town of then just 4,000 people, it meant virtually everybody knew or was related to one of the winners.
Not good news for everyone as a young Peschici woman engaged to be married dumped her fiancé, who was not part of the winning lottery pool, to wed his brother instead, who was among the jackpot syndicate.
Each winner received around €300,000.

No comments: