British Woman Launches Lawsuit against Camelot for Denying Her $1.3M Jackpot

Joan Parker-Grennan, a 53-year old bookkeeper, is taking Camelot, which holds the license to run the National Lottery, to the High Court after the company denied paying out her £1,000,000 ($1.31million) jackpot from a scratchcard game.

A Happy Win Turns into Seven-Year Spat with the Lottery

Joan, who lives with her husband Dave, 60, in Boston, Lincolnshire, was stunned when she found out that she had a winning scratchcard on Camelot’s £20Million Cash Spectacular online Instant Win Game in 2015.

Joan matched two 15s for £10 ($13) and two 1s for a million. However, when she contacted the National Lottery operator to claim her prize, the company told her that there had been a “technical issue” and she had only won a tenner. That was seven years ago. According to Camelot, the software “behaved erroneously” during Joan’s winning game and displayed the £1 million winning numbers in the wrong boxes.

After almost seven years of arguing with the company, Joan filed a legal claim in 2021 and planned to take Camelot to the High Court. The bookkeeper stated that her lawyers had already offered Camelot to settle the case and pay her GBP 700,000 ($917,798), GBP 800,000 ($1.05 million), or GBP 900,000 ($1.18 million). She added that the company had taken the game offline just a day after she made a claim and e-mailed her that there had been a glitch in the scratchcard game.

If the High Court rules in favor of Joan, she said that she and her husband would spend part of the money on a kitchen island and other investments and would help other people as well. Joan’s GBP 1,000,000 ($1.31million) claim seeks “monies due under the terms of a consumer contract between the parties and/or damages for breach of a consumer contract”.

Camelot commented that the incident included a small number of players of the £20Million Online Spectacular game, who faced a problem related to the animation of the game while playing. The company added that the result of every National Lottery Instant Win Game play is pre-determined and the animation is only for enjoyment purposes.

Camelot’s Software Prone to Malfunctions in the Past

In another case related to technical issues, 22,000 players bought single tickets, but got two and paid for both. The National Lottery operator said that there was a hearing scheduled for June 2022, but a trial date was not set yet. This comes after Camelot was fined £3.15 million ($4.13 million) last month by the UK Gambling Commission for technical glitches on its mobile application.

Camelot also filed a legal action before the High Court against the gambling regulator after it selected Allwyn Entertainment, a Czech company, to obtain the license for the National Lottery in 2024. Nigel Railton, chief executive officer of Camelot, commented that the company had launched the legal proceedings believing that the Gambling Commission had taken a wrong decision.