Corte dei conti freezes €25,067,224 from five former employees over four Gratta e Vinci tickets

The Corte dei conti, Sezione Giurisdizionale per il Lazio, ordered on 23 October a preventive seizure of more than €25,067,224 over assets, vehicles and funds belonging to five former employees of the Gratta e Vinci concessionaire, the Guardia di Finanza in Rome said. Prosecutors at the court allege the five used access credentials to identify four winning tickets — two prizes of €7 million and two of €5 million — and that relatives and friends purchased those tickets at outlets to which the winners had been sent.

Judicial action and measures executed

The Guardia di Finanza, Rome provincial command, executed the sequestro conservativo order on 23 October to secure the sum that prosecutors attribute as damage to the Agenzia delle Dogane e dei Monopoli (ADM). The order was issued by the Sezione Giurisdizionale della Corte dei conti per il Lazio at the request of its regional prosecutor; the five were also summoned to trial before the Court of Auditors. The involvement of ADM and the public-interest rationale are central to the [regulatory context](/regulation).

The seizure covers 25 real-estate units — including apartments, small houses, garages and cellars — located in the provinces of Rome, Viterbo, Treviso, Taranto, Grosseto and Reggio Calabria; it also includes five cars and motorcycles and financial holdings. A designated judge will decide in camera whether to confirm, modify or revoke the measure.

Prosecutors’ claim and the theory of damage to the State

Prosecutors quantify the damage to ADM at €25,067,224, which includes both the prizes for the four tickets, totaling €24 million, and what they describe as reputational damage and lost public revenues. The court’s theory is that by removing the random element on the location of prizes, the alleged insiders deprived the State of the portion that would correspond from unclaimed tickets, which under the rules would revert to the Treasury (ADM).

The Corte stressed the presumption of innocence and reminded that liability can only be established by a final judgment of the Court of Auditors.

Origin and facts appearing in the investigation

The tickets in question were redeemed between 2015 and 2019 and re-emerged in a criminal investigation of October 2020, when the Guardia di Finanza, for the Rome prosecution, executed seizures against 12 suspects for alleged fraud, unauthorized computer access, handling stolen goods (ricettazione) and self-laundering, according to contemporaneous reports by Il Fatto Quotidiano and ANSA.

Outlets such as Milano Finanza and Open report that investigators believe the group developed bespoke software to identify winning tickets; the probe was led by Deputy Attorney General Eleonora Lener. Prosecutors initially filed a request to present evidence in March, and say the five defendants’ defenses did not dispel suspicions, so they sought the seizure together with the summons.

Who is implicated and the status of the concession

The Guardia di Finanza does not name the concessionaire in its note; Open identifies the five as former employees of Lottomatica Holding. The Gratta e Vinci concession is exercised by Lotterie Nazionali S.r.l., a joint venture in which Lottomatica Holding held 64% in the 2017 extension, together with Scientific Games and Arianna 2001. The case has implications for the market that operates instant-win lottery products such as Gratta e Vinci; see related coverage in [/casino](/casino).

The lottery activity that includes instant games billed €12.9 billion in 2025 through approximately 52,500 points of sale, according to the first Treasury report on public gaming cited by Avviso Pubblico. State revenue from Gratta e Vinci was around €1.77 billion in 2025, according to analysis by Jamma.

IGT said in 2020 that it suspended four employees under investigation and cooperated with authorities; IGT’s lotteries unit now operates as Brightstar. The Lottomatica brand passed to Gamenet in 2021; the resulting company, Lottomatica Group, which is processing a merger with Cirsa, is not the instant-games concessionaire.

Relevance for the upcoming concession and outstanding questions

The current concession was extended without tender in 2017 for consideration of €800 million and expires on 30 September 2028. The Government committed in July 2025 to advance the new tender, which could be set out in the 2027 Budget Law. Future tender documents will likely ask bidders about access controls on prize data and segregation of staff duties.

The public prosecutor for accounts seeks the sum for ADM based on a counterfactual: absent the alleged insiders’ intervention, those four prizes might not have been redeemed and therefore the corresponding portion would have reverted to the public administration. The judge assessing the precautionary measure must weigh the likelihood of that scenario.

The seizure is precautionary and the case has not yet been adjudicated by a final judgment.