Unlucky Lottery Larceny

A sign in a drugstore window advertising a 15-million-euro ($19.5 million) jackpot proved to be too tempting for Siegfried S. from the eastern German village of Grünhainichen. Likely aware of the slim odds of actually winning the lottery, Siegfried decided to try his luck in another way and stormed into the store last July.

Brandishing a pipe in imitation of a pistol, the man, who's in his mid-60s, demanded that the cashier hand over the money. The amazed employee tried to explain to the befuddled bandit that, while the drugstore sold lottery tickets, it didn't actually keep the jackpot money on the premises.

It was a move not unlike trying to loot Fort Knox by sticking up a cinema screening the James Bond film "Goldfinger."

Eventually, the cashier succeeded in convincing Siegfried that he was way, way off-track, and the would-be lotto robber fled.

Clothes make the man -- identifiable

But it's difficult to evade the long arm of the law in a village of scarcely more than 1,000 inhabitants that is best known as a center of handmade Christmas tree angels and toy drums.

And it didn't help that sixty-something Siegfried was wearing a conspicuous, bright-blue, all-weather parka with the words: "Young People Gearing Up for the Olympics." He was also reportedly carrying a plastic bag emblazoned with the logo of a popular brand of eastern German beer.

Whatever it was that tipped them off, police apprehended him within a day.

At his trial, the poor fellow said he had aborted the robbery out of pity, having noticed the drugstore clerk trembling with fear at his pipe. The judge in the city of Chemnitz, however, didn't accept this as a mitigating circumstance.

Now Siegfried will have a year in the privacy of a cell to plot his next heist -- hopefully he'll come up with something a bit more clever next time around.