National Lottery whacked with £3m fine for suspect ticket win The National Lottery has been whacked with a £3m fine by the Gambling Commission over its failure to have proper controls in place to prevent a fraudulent ticket winning. It followed a probe by the regulator into allegations that a £2.5m fraudulent National Lottery prize had been paid in 2009, but which only came to light last …
I had similar problems once. I bought a scratch card but was unaware of the requirement to have a coin to scratch the silver off.
Annoyingly I only had a tenner on me so I had to waste it buying 10 pound coins from the disinterested chav at the counter.
I only won a pound so I made a net loss of a tenner. Thanks a lot for nothing Camelot.
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The BBC article says that it was a payout on a "deliberately damaged" ticket. Still too thin on the details.
What no-one out there has commented on is why it took 7 years for this dodgy payout to be publicly revealed, never mind how the allegedly "winning" ticket was damaged. Considering lottery tickets have a security code on them, you do suspect some inside involvement (i.e. either the "winner" had access to the security code algorithm or they paid someone off to falsely validate the ticket).
What you seem to be saying is the small team of National Lottery validators work in cahoots. Maybe it starts with an unclaimed Prize. They know the winning terminal location.
Pony up a trusted person (known to one of the team) they know that lives in the area, maybe has used that particular National Lottery Terminal. Insider knowledge of the process, fit a person to the ticket's profile purchasing history.
When you start to look at this, even revealing where a winning ticket was bought should remain hidden from everyone, including the validators. There seems like there could be much more fraud here taking place here, than has been publicised. That's pretty much a given, though, like Visa/Mastercard a certain percentage of fraud is unavoidable/not cost effective to pursue.
Maybe now tickets for lower amount 'below the radar' should be looked at, where there wasn't a fully validated ticket given as proof.
That was almost informative. Here's how they might have done it. Someone with access to the database gets the number of an unclaimed ticket. They then print up a forgery and an accomplice presents it at the office. Then they register the ticket on the computer as being valid despite the bar code being wrong.
The gambling industry is permitted under law on the basis that it is specifically regulated.
WTF was the regulator doing? It relied on a tip-off... and all the evidence is lost.
This is simply inadequate not regulatory oversight. It is however, consistent with the Gambling Commission position of "light touch", "not interfere with business"....
is the regulator an only and enabler? does the regulator utilise best-practice expertise (apparently not) or does the regulator consider it is best practice (it clearly is not)?
The real issue here is, ""WHAT'S GOING ON WITH GAMBLING REGULATION IN GREAT BRITAIN?"
For goodness sakes, these gambling companies are given a licence to print money, off the back of those who can least afford it, and the regulatory oversight here is not even questioned!
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