The extraordinary story of the ten colleagues who pocketed the Euromillions jackpot

It’s an exceptional story in every way that our colleagues from Le Parisien tell us. Ten work colleagues pocketed a million euros this week, two months after sharing a Euromillions grid. Each of them left the offices of La Française des jeux with a check for 100,000 euros in their pocket and a “banana” on their face.

The fate of these lucky people almost never changed. Accustomed for 15 years to filling out a grid every week with colleagues, the ten were far from suspecting that a million euros was waiting for them somewhere. The winning ticket, bearing the code DF 321 7979, was languishing at the bottom of a drawer or under a pile of paper at one of the players' houses. However, the rule is that after a period of 60 days the winner is no longer eligible.

None of the ten friends heard about the communication campaign organized by the FDJ to find this millionaire who was unaware of it. You can't make this up: it was the film “Les Tuche” that tipped their heads. The one who kept the ticket watches this hit film which features a modest family winning 100 million euros in the lottery.

Dreaming of this extraordinary destiny, he takes his old ticket and goes to his tobacco shop. The player tells Le Parisien what happened next: “The machine told me to go to the counter. That meant I had a big win. It was 40°C in the room, but I was cold, I was shivering. It's a feeling that I recommend to everyone... The first teller told me that her equipment wasn't working, the second told me: Houla, you made a big win. I thought about €20,000, that wasn't bad because divided by ten, it's €2,000, or more than a month's salary for us!”

The rest is known: The FDJ told him that he had not won 20,000 euros, but a million. The ten colleagues share it between themselves and do not yet know what they will do with this money that fell from the sky. “We are workers, we are not rolling in gold,” confides one of them. They now have plenty of time to think about it!