Edwina and David Nylan selected what would have been the winning numbers for a £35 million Lotto jackpot but they couldn’t collect their winnings
Lottery winners who thought they’d hit the jackpot with a whopping £35 million win ended up as skint as before they bought their £2 ticket.
Edwina and David Nylan, who entered the draw on 23 December 2015, could never have predicted that six of the winning numbers would appear on the Lottomobile app. In what must have initially felt like a Christmas miracle, the cash-strapped Nylans discovered that each of their six numbers – 01 – 02 – 04 – 19 – 28 – 41 – had won, netting them an incredible £35,410,034.
However, their dreams were shattered in dramatic fashion when they attempted to claim the jackpot – all due to their depleted bank account. Grandmother Edwina, from Fleetwood, Lancashire, said: “When the numbers came up, it looked like we had got all six and had won the jackpot but when I checked, there was nothing from Camelot.
“I rang customer services at Camelot and the person I spoke to said they could see from their records that we had intended to buy those numbers but they said the purchase did not go through because we only had 60p in our account.
“We had tried to top up the account and hadn’t realised that hadn’t registered either. You get an email to confirm your purchase, but I didn’t remember to check because it was just before Christmas and I was so busy.”
Edwina, who tried her best to stay positive, expressed her disappointment: “I am gutted, but what can we do? We have played for years, and had our online account for some time, so it is not as if we didn’t know what we were doing.
“I have just had to carry on with things and not get too down. Shocked isn’t the word, but as a family we stick together and just have to be grateful for what we’ve got.”
Despite their devastating setback, the couple revealed they would continue playing the Lottery, hoping for better luck in the future.
A Camelot spokesperson said: “The player did attempt to purchase an online Lotto ticket multiple times on December 23 from 7pm onwards (the cut-off to buy tickets is 7.30pm), however, there were insufficient funds in the player’s account – so the attempted purchases were not successful.
“The player would have received an error message on every occasion confirming this. We do not have any record of the player attempting to add funds to their account, nor would anyone from our customer services team have any visibility of the numbers that the player attempted to purchase because that level of detail wouldn’t be shown on the screen in front of them.
“When anyone successfully purchases a ticket on the Lottery website they will see a purchase confirmation screen, receive an email confirming their purchase and be able to see the ticket in their National Lottery online account.”
They added: “Only tickets that have been successfully purchased can be entered into the draw. So it is up to players to ensure that they have adequate funds in their account to complete a ticket purchase.”
