Francisco Guerrero won a 6.5 million Euro (about £5.4m) jackpot in a Spanish lottery – but says he never saw a penny of his winnings after he was advised to make a series of ‘toxic’ investments
A lottery winner who bagged a whopping 6.5 million Euro (around £5.4m) lottery jackpot claims he didn’t receive a single penny of his windfall due to poor advice from a bank official.
Francisco Guerrero, a builder from Cádiz, purchased a ticket for the Spanish BonoLoto lottery in December 2005. When his numbers were drawn, he was initially unsure about the size of his winnings.
Spain had only switched to the Euro a few years before Francisco’s win, and so when he was first notified about his good fortune he mistakenly believed he had only won 6.5m Pesetas – roughly £33,000.
It wasn’t until later that he grasped the she scale of his wealth. Describing himself as a man “without education” and “completely ignorant of financial matters”, Francisco sought advice on how to manage his newfound wealth.
He recounted: “I signed because I trusted them; they invited me several times for lunch and then took me to the bank to sign. With two glasses of wine, I was on a roll and signed whatever they told me to. To this day, I still don’t know what I signed; I can’t even pronounce it.”
He was advised that the best move would be to invest all his prize money into high-risk, high-reward financial products. He maintains that he did not understand the documents he signed during his meetings with the bank.
Francisco had been careful not to dip into his savings, but in 2009, a knee surgery led him to discover that his investments in “toxic financial products” had wiped out his fortune.
It has been estimated that Francisco had lost an amount it would have taken him over 270 years to earn as a builder.
Upon winning his windfall, Francisco generously shared it with his five children, keeping 60% for himself and allocating the remainder to them, but their money was lost too, because it had all been kept in one account.
Now aged 73, Francisco lamented his lack of understanding about the financial products he invested in: “I didn’t even know what it was. I trusted them blindly and they destroyed my life.”
The devastated builder sought justice through the courts, and outside the courtroom, he expressed his despair, saying “I am dead in life”. He faced the grim reality of being unable to pay his mortgage and living like a “living as a squatter” in his own house.
Haunted by the threat of eviction, Francisco fought back and triumphed in three separate legal battles against the bank.
In a landmark ruling in 2016, the bank was compelled to reimburse Francisco €1.06 million for locking his money away in “complex products”.
According to the verdict from Castellón’s Court of First Instance No. 4, the bank was caught in a web of its own making, with the judgement noting it “showed inconsistency and contradiction by claiming that the contractor had sufficient experience and knowledge to carry out the contracted investment”.
Fast forward three years to 2019, and Francisco clinched back an additional €1.2 million for his two offspring’s investments, each having poured in €600,000. The court ruled there was a clear “defect in consent”.