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13. 04. 12. - 08:00

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13. 04. 12. - 08:00

Ice Folly

Kathryn Quinn

Serbian ice cream firm manager Darko Ratkovic thought he had it licked after he fiddled the results so that he won hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of prizes that should have gone to genuine customers last summer.

People who purchased ice creams produced by the Frikom company from the capital Belgrade were told they had to "lick it to win" - referring to the fact that they had to uncover the secret code number underneath the ice cream by licking clean the wooden stick.

But instead of random customers the 29-year-old had arranged for all of the prizes to go to people he knew, including a brand-new Hummer jeep, a 200,000 pounds crash price and hundreds of smaller amounts of 2,000 pounds as well as new iPhones and iPads.

The greedy manager was caught when fellow workers noticed how many people who were friends with him seem to be receiving prizes in the contest – and alerted police.

Ratkovic and friends have now been arrested and face charges of fraud over the scam. They claim the winnings were just good luck and denied that it was a con.

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