This month’s VAT lottery raised eyebrows after one participant walked away with a cool €2,700 – three wins in the same draw.

An exercise by Times of Malta, however, revealed there were four other winners who were also extra lucky in this month’s draw.

One winner won twice in the same draw, while three people had previously scooped a stash of euros in past VAT lotteries, a coincidence that many felt was too good to be true.

The first winner, a 60-year-old former Armed Forces of Malta officer from St Julian’s, declined to comment when contacted.

He was joined by another winner from Floriana who this month walked away with €466 – he won on two separate receipts that he entered into the draw. This lucky winner had also been awarded €1,194 in two other VAT lotteries last year.

Social media was yesterday awash with speculation over the phenomenon, with some questioning whether the lottery had been tampered with.

Their speculation is not unfounded as 11 people had been charged with fixing the VAT lottery back in 2003.

11 people had been charged with fixing the VAT lottery back in 2003

The scammers, public officials from the Lotto Department, had been pre-selecting receipts and fixing them to the inside of the lottery barrel for a cut of the winnings.

In 2013 Times of Malta reported on a man from Guardamangia who scooped a staggering €23,000 after winning twice in the same draw.

Back then statistician Silvan Zammit told Times of Malta that even if the punter in question had submitted as many as 10,000 receipts, which is highly unlikely, his chances of winning twice in the same draw were a mere 0.005 per cent.

If he submitted a more realistic 1,000 receipts, the chances of a double draw happening go down to 0.000006 per cent.

Asked whether the win had raised any suspicions, a spokesman for the Finance Ministry, which is responsible for the VAT Department, had pointed out that multiple wins had happened before and as far as the department was concerned the draws were all in line with normal procedure.

Other social media commentators yesterday also questioned whether any of the multiple winners had submitted receipts in the hope of raising money for charity. They claimed that NGOs often collected receipts and submitted them to win funds to support their charitable endeavours.

In the case of the second winner, the speculation was right on the mark, as it was Philip Cutajar, a priest who raises money for AIDS patients in Cuba, who enjoyed the double win.

The capuchin friar has long collected receipts for his charitable cause and was even awarded Cuba’s prestigious Premio Solidaridad, similar to the Ġieħ Ir-Repubblika award, for his work in Cuba.

This does not explain the three other winners in this month’s draw who had also won in the past.

One winner who netted €400 had won €395 back in 2011, while another of this month’s winners, who won €947, had walked away with a neat €1,840 in 2012. The most recent multiple winner from this month’s draw was a Gozitan woman who won €5,090 after her €50 receipt was pulled out of the VAT barrel. She had also won €1,000 last year.

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