A builder was having a coffee in a small bar in Colomera with some friends when he decided to go to the toilet, but absentmindedly left his wallet on the counter – so far, not good. Moments later another local from the town came in, saw the wallet, picked it up and exited rapidly.

Minutes later the owner of the missing wallet finds that somebody has used his bank card to withdraw 300 euros. Obviously, the victim must have his pin number written somewhere in the said wallet – not clever.

Then, within a short time, somebody purchased 1,400 euros in tools from an ironmonger in Atarfe. The shop owner, not convinced that the man with the card is the person identified on it, phones the bank and asks for some form of identity information about the person’s appearance and receives the answer that the card owner uses a hearing aid.

Such are the coincidences in life that the thief also uses one, so the shop owner seeing that the man has a hearing aid, accepts the card and processes the purchase.

The thief makes one last attempt to use the card, trying a cash-point in Pinos Puente, but on this occasion as he had already withdrawn 300 euros that same day, the transaction is refused.

In the meantime the owner of the wallet has gone around to the Guardia Civil, who begun investigating and soon identified the thief because the cash-points are covered by CCTV and the person had not attempted to hide his identity.

And so a story ends with one more twist: the wallet contained a winning lottery ticket for several hundred euros, but the thief had missed it and it was still there when it was handed back to its owner.

(News: Colomera, Granada, Andalucia)