My plot to win the Lotto

Accountant Stefan led syndicate in 90s to beat system

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STEFAN Klincewicz is dealing with a plumber.

"It was a mains burst, so it was quite serious. We could've had a swimming pool there in the garden," he says, laughing.

A pool in the garden: sounds like the stuff of lottery daydreams.

Klincewicz is the main protagonist in Ross Whitaker's new documentary Beat The Lotto, which opens in cinemas this week.

It's about a syndicate led by the Cork-born accountant that tried to scoop the National Lottery jackpot in 1992 with an audacious plan.

"Watching it was like a feeling of reincarnation," says Klincewicz. "It happened over 30 years ago and suddenly it's all come back to life. It was like a previous life."

Director Ross Whitaker has made acclaimed films about Katie Taylor and Muhammad Ali in the past and recently produced Kathleen Harris' award-winning Birdsong.

He also made an 2021 documentary about Barney Curley's famous Bellewstown coup and Beat The Lotto has similar levels of roguery to that.

HEIST

"Making a film like this, the fun of it is about building that tension for the audience," says Whitaker.

"I suppose that's what attracted me to it. You don't get to see that in documentaries very often. It's more something you see in a heist movie."

This was not Klincewicz's first rodeo. He was one of the members of the Scruffy Murphy's pub syndicate that successfully scooped a £2,439,760 (€2,821,301) Lotto jackpot in 1990.