A French man’s credit card was stolen from his car and used to buy a lottery ticket, among other things. He then won the lottery, hitting a jackpot of Euro 500,000, approximately Rs 4.57 crore.

The man, Jean-David Estele, has now proposed to share the reward with the thieves, CNN reported.

Mr Estele’s lawyer Pierre Debuisson said the thieves broke into his client’s car in Toulouse on February 3. They used the card for payment at a bar the same day, and one of the other purchases was a lottery ticket, which later proved to be the winning one, Mr Debuisson added.

Mr Estele wants to split the jackpot with the two thieves, the lawyer said, adding his client believed the criminals were homeless and had since fled.

Mr Debuisson added that without Mr Estele’s credit card, it would not have been possible to purchase the ticket, but “without the thieves’ behaviour, the ticket wouldn’t have been bought either.”

Mr Estele doesn’t plan to file charges and has urged the thieves to come forward.

“We don’t know much about the thieves beyond the fact that they are homeless,” Mr Debuisson said, adding the search was “proving difficult.”

Police are yet to identify the pair despite finding fingerprints at the scene.

Mr Estele and his spouse intend to build a new house with their share of the money. Police declined to comment on the matter, and French lottery organiser Francaise des Jeux (FDJ) said that no claim for the reward had yet been made.

In another similar story, a North Carolina man won a mammoth $110,000 (Rs 95,91,136) lottery after he claimed to have had a dream that he would win. Robert Hoban bought a $1 lottery ticket and went to bed with the drawing on his mind, he said. The next day, he woke up to find his dream had come true – he had won the exact amount he had seen in his dream.

“It’s strange because I even dreamed of the exact amount that I won. It was very crazy, but it’s true,” he said.