Is Costis Mitsotakis the unluckiest man in the world?

The only person in whole of Spanish village who didn't win a share of £600m lottery jackpot (because he didn't buy a ticket)
Costis Mitsotakis was missed off as residents went round collecting money for the draw, whilst every other home in Sodeto, northwest Spain, had at least one winning ticket in the Christmas draw.
A single £4 ticket would have won him £83,000 but some households bought several tickets and became millionaires

This is filmmaker Costis Mitsotakis - the only man in a Spanish village who didn't win a share of a £600million lottery prize because he forgot to buy a ticket.
When the residents of Sodeto's number came up on the Christmas mega draw - called El Gordo or the Big One - they danced down the street in the conga.
But Mr Mitsotakis wasn't celebrating - because when community leaders went round the 70 houses in their remote community collecting money for tickets they missed him off.

The winning tickets were all bought in the small town and the surrounding villages including Sodeto which has around 70 houses. A share in a single ticket - or a 'participation' would have cost him £4 and would have won him an £83,000 prize.
The Greek national moved to the area after falling in love with a woman. When the relationship fell apart he stayed in the area and has been renovating a barn.
However, Mr Mitsotakis did not lose out entirely as the day after the Christmas draw was made a neighbour agreed to use their winnings to buy a plot of land he had been trying to sell.

The Spanish lottery El Gordo - the Fat One - has a total of 1,800 winning tickets. Each ticket costs around £16 but it is sub-divided into four participations which cost around £4 each.
Each one of the residents bought a ticket bearing the first prize winning number 58,268 - except for Mr Mitsotakis.
While some people won £83,000 after buying a single share, other villagers won millions.
In total, the people of Sodeto received around £100million of the £600million money for the 'first prize tickets'. The rest of the £600million fund went to people in the town of Granen nearby and neighbouring villages.
The village, in northern Spain, is around three hours by car from Barcelona on the coast.
José Manuel Penella Cambra's wife bought two participations and his son discovered two more which he had forgotten he had bought. In total, the family netted in the region of £372,000.
The homeowner joked to the New York Times: 'I kept saying: look for some more, look for some more.'

The big Christmas lottery has taken place since 1812 - and the average Spaniard spends £47 on tickets. It is so popular people take the day off work to watch the draw
'But this money means that now we can breathe. And the best part is that it isn’t just me. Everybody won.'
Sodeto, which has around 250 residents, has been inundated with travelling salesmen and bankers hoping to persuade the wealthy villagers to part with their winnings.
The annual El Gordo lottery has been running since 1812 and is so popular that some people take the day off work to watch the morning draw.
The homemakers association in Sodeto organise the sale of tickets for the draw every year.
Although a single participation costs £4, the area has been so badly hit by the recession that some people were struggling to come up with the money.

The lottery gives out 1,800 first prizes for each whole ticket split into four participations of £332,000, 1,800 prizes of £100,000, 1,800 third prizes of £41,600 and thousands of smaller cash prizes. Around £50 million of the takings go to charities including the Red Cross.

 

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U.S. treasure hunters must return $500million haul seized from seabed shipwreck to Spain
It is a treasure haul of unimaginable magnificence, an undersea Aladdin's cave of silver coins, hauled covertly out of the lost wreck of a 19th century Spanish galleon and airlifted to the U.S.
But now a five year legal wrangle over the true ownership of a $500million treasure trove seized by American treasure hunters in 2007 has come to an end-with a U.S judge ruling that the 17ton fortune must be returned to Spain.
The Florida-based Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc. has been locked in a dispute with Spain since, unbeknownst to the authorities, it landed the haul in Gibraltar and flew it by chartered aircraft to its company base in Florida.

Treasure-hunters: The ship Odyssey Explorer after it was seized by Spanish authorities.

A judge has ordered the Tampa-based owners to return $500 million worth of of gold and silver coins discovered in 2007 on the a shipwrecked Spanish frigate
The deep-sea exploration company had requested a stay after a federal court in Atlanta ruled last year the explorers must give the treasure back to the Spanish government.
In an order on Tuesday, a U.S. circuit court judge denied the company's motion for a stay.
In court documents, the exploration firm said it wanted to stay the proceedings until the U.S. Supreme Court could consider the case.

Odyssey had said in court filings that such a denial might mean Spain will keep the treasure forever. Spain's position is that it is not subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. courts, Odyssey said.
So 'it is certainly reasonable to assume that should the cargo recovered by Odyssey be transferred to Spain, it will never be returned to the Odyssey or to the United States for proper adjudication of claims,' the exploration company wrote in court documents requesting the stay.

The coins were discovered by a remote-controlled, deep sea robots 1,100 metres down

A five year legal wrangle over the true ownership of a $500million treasure trove seized by American treasure hunters in 2007 has come to an end
The Spanish government announced the treasure found at a location that Odyssey named 'Black Swan' would be on home territory within 10 days.
'This sentence gives Spaniards back what was already theirs,' the culture minister, José Ignacio Wert said. 'There is a space of 10 days in which the coins must be returned.'
The judge had upheld a decision by Atlanta judge Mark Pizzo, who had rejected Odyssey's position that there was no single wreck site. They claimed the coins were scattered across a vast area so that it was not possible to know which ship they originated from.
Pizzo declared the haul came from the Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes, a Spanish galleon sunk by a British squadron in October 1804, off Cape St Mary, Portugal, the Guardian reported.
The treasure-hunters had set out to hunt down the Mercedes, he said.

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo said the judgement sets a legal precedent to which future treasure hunters would be bound
The coins, dating from before 1804, matched the mint of the Mercedes' cargo, which was returning to Spain to pay for Spain's wars in Europe.
The treasure, enough to fill 600 barrels, now belong to Spain and to the descendants of the 250 sailors who perished when the ship was sunk.
A further 400,000 coins from the Mercedes remain lost, adding to the intrigue.

 

 

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