Man who thought he’d won £50,000 on lottery actually won £6
A man who mistakenly thought he’d won big on the lottery rang up his family and friends to tell them the good news.
Dean Smethurst, 32, was over the moon and even cracked open a bottle of champagne after thinking he had scooped at least £50,000 on three lucky dip games.
When he checked the tickets with lottery operators Camelot of Thursday they told him his prize was really a paltry £6.
To say he was devastated would be an understatement.
He said: ‘I didn’t sleep because I was so excited.
‘My house is like a building site at the moment so that was the first thing that I decided to spend my winnings on.
‘Then I decided to treat the family to a luxury holiday to Barbados. I spoke to the checkout girl and gave her the serial number of the ticket.’
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It turned out he had made a mistake after initially going to check his ticket at the Farnworth Tesco store, in Lancashire, on Wednesday where he used to work.
Mr Smethurst added: ‘When I had purchased the ticket I had bought one for both the Saturday and Wednesday draw.
‘As the Wednesday draw was in the process of taking place, it looks like this was an automated message instead which would have been given for any win.’
Mr Smethurst had decided not to check the numbers because he assumed he had won big after receiving the message that was usually generated for wins of at least £50,000.
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In the end he commiserated with his mum over a home cooked meal.
He was also glad he had the day off work on Thursday so he wouldn’t have to face colleagues who would have probably made fun of him.
A Camelot spokesman said: ‘In this instance, the player attempted to claim a prize during a “draw break”, when National Lottery sales are suspended while a draw takes place.
‘The prize couldn’t be paid out at that time – because the ticket was still entered into a ‘live’ draw – so a validation slip was printed instead.
‘To clarify, this generic slip is used for a number of scenarios – it’s not exclusively used for high-tier prizes.’