They say that money does not bring happiness, but there is no doubt that it helps to find it. What if you were (or thought you were) the winner of a Primitiva ticket worth almost 5 million euros?
This is the thread of the HBO Max docuseries, Wanted a Millionaire, produced by Unicorn Content, which once again puts the focus on a story where money, suffering, illusion and deception are the protagonists.
In 2013, six numbers revolutionized the city of A Coruña: 10 – 17 – 24 – 37 – 40 – 43. That combination grabbed hundreds of headlines throughout the Spanish press and attracted hundreds of people like honey to flies. who claimed to be the owners of that ticket.
Alberto Mahía, a journalist for La Voz de Galicia for 22 years, was the first to open one of the strangest, most contradictory and complicated mysteries in the recent history of our country. ‘They are looking for a Coruña who lost a primitive of 4.7 million’, collected that headline that shortly after would become almost a matter of State and a police plot worthy of the best thrillers.
“With this news I feel that I have won the lottery because it caused a great stir at a national and international level, which has lasted for years. You have to look for the news and many times it is a matter of luck,” says the journalist in the documentary Millionaire Wanted, which is taking HBO Max by storm. “I never imagined what was going to come after.”
Ten years later, with more than 300 people having claimed the prize, with a case still open against a lottery player, Manuel Reija, and his brother, Miguel Reija, who at that time was the State Lotteries and Gambling delegate in A Coruña, It is still not known one hundred percent who was the owner of that treasure, despite the fact that the Police investigation concluded that they did find it. However, since that September 15, 2013 when the news broke, there have been so many who have struggled to prove that the ticket was theirs, that despite the investigation by the National Police, the case of the lost millionaire remains unresolved.
“Millionaire Wanted is at once a puzzle, an investigation, and a reflection of what the mind, driven by illusion, is capable of creating and believing. It is a story so real that, at times, it can seem like a lie” , says Noemí Redondo, one of the directors of the documentary that is attracting the most followers this summer.
“In this story there was pain, there was intrigue, there was suspense, there was mystery, there was hope… It had all the ingredients to become a great story, a perfect true crime,” adds its other director, Susana López Raña. “In Wanted a Millionaire we talk about human obsession, how money can corrupt people and how money can change your life, for better or worse. What would you do if you had the slightest doubt that a millionaire prize could be yours? How far would you be willing to go?” he wonders.
Lets start by the beginning. It all started on June 26, 2012. That was the day the ticket that later appeared in the Manuel Reija Lottery administration was stamped. He assures that on July 2, said ticket was found on the counter when there was no one in the administration, and, therefore, he did not know who it might belong to. After discovering that he was awarded, according to his version, he gave the receipt to his brother Miguel Reija. It all seemed very strange from the beginning. First, because the bet, which was made automatically, that is, the machine chose the numbers, was made in a Lottery administration of a Carrefour in A Coruña. And, second, because of that “I found the ticket at the counter when I was alone.” As the police investigation would later show, he was neither alone nor was he found. 4.7 million euros is a lot, a lot of money. And money brings happiness, but it also clouds and corrupts.
The finding of the awarded Primitive was kept secret for a little over a year. Everything came to light with that first article by Mahía. From there everything was chaos. The winning ticket, kept in a State Lottery and Betting safe in Madrid, had no owner. The story of the lottery, who had there not been any complaint, would have ended up with the lottery who found him a millionaire, according to the law, and his family link with the Lottery delegate from A Coruña, led dozens of people to plunge into an obsession that Even today, a decade later, it continues to be, according to what 13 of them say in the documentary, the center of their lives.
The City Council of A Coruña searched and is still searching today for the millionaire. Hundreds of people claimed it, but only a few had a story that could match the evidence collected so far. “In those days, all the offices received inquiries from people who assured that the ticket was theirs. We received seven candidates with a story that coincided with the dates,” lawyer Kostka Fernández says in the documentary. Everyone had (have) to prove it. What the documentary makes clear is that Almudena, Mario, Jacobo, Manuel, Eladio… remain convinced and were convinced, some until the last days of his life, that the ticket was his and that Manuel Reija stole it.
Some security cameras would have solved the case if things had been done right from the beginning, but it wasn’t until many years later when things started to be done right and it was too late. The images are no longer extant, as are many of those who claimed the prize. Some died of old age, others, like Juan, key in the investigation, died obsessed with those 4.7 million. And, although those who are still alive continue to believe that the ticket was theirs, the National Police found the clues that many years after that June 26 would lead them to the owner.
The story of Juan, a young man convinced that the ticket that Manuel Reija said he found was his (it would prove that it could not be, since he himself declared in his complaint that he made the manual bet) gave impetus to the investigation. What seemed like a fortuitous discovery allegedly hid a plot organized to collect the prize and in which the lottery and the Lottery delegate from A Coruña were involved. To this day, he is still pending trial.
The insistence of Juan, who lived his last months without practically sleeping or with anxiolytics due to the anguish caused by believing that he was the owner of the prize, discovered that the lottery could not find the ticket nor was he alone. Miguel Reija, according to the police investigation, checked three more along with the winning ticket at the same time and a few seconds before checking other different tickets, which led the Police to believe that the winning Primitiva was kept without notifying its owner, who He went to his administration to check four bets on La Primitiva.
With the numbers of the other tickets, the Police claimed similar betting patterns from State Lotteries and Betting. “His perseverance and the other details provided (batch of validated tickets, prize payment with a higher amount, massive presence of clients in the administration) were surprisingly consistent with the checks carried out and not a mere coincidence,” the police report indicated.
Those bets had been played in other parts of Spain: the Canary Islands, Fuerteventura, Torremolinos, the Balearic Islands… The plaintiffs continued to defend their alibis, but the police investigations turned the investigation around. The supposed millionaire had a gambling pattern. The siege narrows and all the clues point to a single person, Santiago, a pensioner from Imserso, with gambling problems that he never told his wife or his family who played Primitiva.
Eleven years later, the money is still without an owner and the booty is now bigger, because the 4.7 million euros have been increasing due to the interest that has been generated during this time.
The lottery and his brother are pending trial. Both will sit on the bench accused of a crime of misappropriation. But the Court of A Coruña has upheld the appeal made by the State Attorney’s Office and the provisional dismissal of the case has been agreed with respect to four other investigated, all of them senior officials of State Lotteries and Gambling at the time that events happened.
And the claimants? Many have abandoned the treasure hunt, unable to afford legal fees after so many years; others remain convinced, despite the fact that police evidence refutes it, that they are the legitimate owners; and others, like Santiago, the man who for investigators is the owner, can no longer prove it. “How do you ask a dead man?” says one of the lawyers in the documentary. The question remains unanswered: what would you do for 4.7 million euros?
According to the criteria of The Trust Project