The tale of a bungling World Cup ticket thief who got his just desserts turned out on Monday to be an accidental invention of German police.

Munich police had released a statement about the "audacious thief" who snatched a woman's handbag, found the ticket inside and sat down to watch Brazil play Australia on Sunday -- only to find himself next to her husband, who alerted the police.

But a police spokesman later said the statement had mixed up two different cases -- one of which did involve a Brazilian woman having her handbag and ticket stolen -- and the encounter between thief and husband never took place.

"It was a mistake...In the course of the investigation we realised we had mixed up things that didn't belong together," he said.