UK men sue Camelot after dubious £4 million lotto win

Mark Goodram and Jon-Ross Watson thought their ship had arrived the day they purchased a UK lotto scratch ticket that paid off to the tune of £4 million ($4.88 million USD). UK lottery officials, however, said, “not so fast” when they discovered that the pair purchased the winning ticket with a debit card that didn’t belong to either man.
While this story may appear to be a case of Camelot, the operator running the scratch ticket lotto game, it’s actually an excellent example of the kind of due diligence UK gaming regulators, and the UK public, have been demanding from gambling operators for years.
Goodram and Watson are both currently experiencing homelessness and said they had to use a friend’s debit card in order to access their monthly welfare checks. In their version of the story, that’s why they were purchasing lotto tickets with that particular card. The card owner, however, says the men did not have his permission to use the card, though they couldn’t provide authorities any contact information for the man. Those bits of information hasn’t stopped the pair, who both have extensive criminal histories, from hiring an attorney to defend their claim to the lotto winnings.
Camelot’s fraud detection department is standing by their claim that the men are not entitled to the scratch card winnings and who could blame them? In recent months, UK gaming operators have been under incredible scrutiny from gaming regulators who are asking them to provide exactly this level of due diligence, especially when it comes to accounts and actions that are funded by dubious sources.