Nigerian street vendor Imagbe Ehizomwengie won €500,000 on an Italian scratch card bought with begged money, but couldn’t claim his prize because he was undocumented — until a court finally granted him residency, giving him both his winnings and his papers.
HE WON €500,000. THEN EVERYTHING WENT WRONG.
Imagbe Ehizomwengie scratched a €5 lottery ticket and hit €500,000. He wept. Then reality hit harder than the jackpot.
The 36-year-old Nigerian had been living without documents in the Pesaro area of Italy’s Marche region when he bought the Gratta e Vinci scratchcard in November 2025 — with coins scraped together from selling handkerchiefs and begging outside a supermarket. When he realised what he’d won, he cried tears of joy.
Those tears quickly turned to despair.
Without a residency permit, he couldn’t open a bank account. Without a bank account, he couldn’t collect his winnings. Without the winnings, he couldn’t prove the financial independence needed to support his residency appeal. He was trapped in a bureaucratic loop with half a million euros sitting just out of reach, per The Guardian and Il Resto del Carlino.
Desperate for a solution, Ehizomwengie entrusted the money to a fellow Nigerian he considered a friend. Big mistake. The friend began treating the funds as his own. Community members and Ehizomwengie’s cousin eventually intervened, brokering a deal that saw roughly €250,000 transferred to the cousin’s account. Those funds were used to buy Mama Africa — an African food shop in the seaside town of Falconara Marittima — where Ehizomwengie was to work once he got his papers.
His backstory is extraordinary. He fled Nigeria after his mother warned him to escape obligations linked to a secret society run by his father. He crossed the Sahara, was held captive in Libya for two years, released only after a ransom was paid, then crossed the Mediterranean by boat, landing in Palermo in 2016.
His initial application for special protection was rejected. His lawyers fought on. This week, the Tribunale di Ancona ruled in his favour — citing his fluent Italian, community integration and clean criminal record.
“Receiving the permit means more to me than winning the money,” he told The Guardian. “I want to work and contribute to society.”
His lawyer Andrea Palazzeschi was quick to clarify one thing: “Imagbe didn’t get the residence permit because he won the money. He got it because he proved to be a good candidate.”
Ehizomwengie is now planning a party in Falconara. Everyone is invited — but only, he insists, to celebrate the permit.
The money, he says, can wait.
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