Woman taking Lottery operators to court after £1m 'jackpot' not paid

A woman is taking the company which operates the Lottery to court over a £1 million “jackpot” that has not been paid to her. But Camelot says Joan Parker-Grennan never actually won the prize.

Joan was said to be delighted when she found she had a winning online scratchcard on a £20Million Online Spectacular game in 2015. She was even happier to see she’d landed a million.

However, when the 53-year-old contacted Camelot to claim her winnings, they told her there had been a “technical issue” that meant the game displayed numbers in the wrong boxes. That meant she only won £10.

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After years of arguing with the company – fined millions last month for separate technical glitches on its mobile app – furious company bookkeeper Joan launched a legal claim in 2021. Her lawyers are now set to take Camelot to High Court.

Joan, who lives with husband Dave, 60, in Boston, Lincolnshire, said: “My solicitors have already offered them the chance to settle and pay £700,000, £800,000 or £900,000. They took the game offline within a day of me making the claim. They told me in an email it was a glitch.”

Camelot ran the National Lottery for 28 years but was told last month it was losing it to a Czech company. It claims software behaved “erroneously” during Joan’s “win”.

In the game the top row of numbers were matched to those beneath. Joan matched two 15s for a tenner but also two ones for a million. Last month Camelot was fined £3.15m by the Gambling Commission for technical issues on its mobile app.

First, 20,000 users were told their winning tickets were losing tickets when they scanned a QR code, then a separate glitch affected 22,000 players who