Lottery operator awards prize to girlfriend; boyfriend threatens legal action
A United Kingdom couple are at war over a lottery payout worth £1 million (US$1.27 million) after allegedly buying the ticket "together" before splitting up weeks later.
Michael Cartlidge, 39, says he and former girlfriend Charlotte Cox, 37, purchased the Lotto card together at a shop in Spalding, Lincolnshire. But after breaking up with him weeks later, Charlotte has now been deemed the sole winner by lottery operator Allwyn.
Michael, a security engineer, admits that Charlotte paid for and scratched the ticket. But he claims that he suggested the idea to buy one and attempted to transfer her cash in the shop to cover the purchase.
He says that the mother-of-one initially agreed to share the cash, but after walking out on him weeks later, claimed to be the sole winner.
"£1 million has never brought such misery," according to a person close to the situation.
The dispute was initially investigated by the UK Lottery's former operator Camelot before they were supplanted by Allwyn, which currently runs the lottery.
Camelot had viewed the CCTV footage from the shop and had indicated to Michael that the money would be split, he says. Before the investigation was complete, Allwyn stepped in as lottery operator, and that's where things changed. The new Lottery operators have now ruled that Charlotte is the rightful claimant.
Michael maintains he has a right to half the cash and is considering launching legal action.
"I am in shock. I can openly admit that we wouldn't have got that ticket without Charlotte, but she wouldn't have got it without me either", he told The Sun. "I know it was her bank account that paid for it, but it should go 50-50 morally."
Charlotte called Michael's claims "rubbish", with a source telling the publication her former partner had "no right" to the jackpot.
The couple had been together for three months before the lotto drama started. On the night of the win, Michael had been living at Charlotte's house as they decided to stop at their local Lidl to buy duck pancakes for dinner. He then claims they suggested to go to the Nisa next door to buy a couple of £5 scratchcards.
According to Michael, his former partner had told her she didn't have the money to pay for it so he opened his bank app to make the transfer.
The father-of-one said, "I started the transfer, I held it up to show her. You can see me doing this on the shop CCTV, which Camelot has. The signal was bad so it didn't go through at the time in the shop, it was just in the process of transferring. The little loading circle was going round. She bought the two tickets on her card and when we got home she scratched it."
To their amazement one of the scratchcards landed them the £1 million jackpot.
40 minutes later, Michael's transfer went through.
The couple celebrated their win with a trip to the seaside. They had multiple plans in the works such as buying a house together and purchasing a car. The ticket was put in Charlotte's name, but said the money was due to go into a joint account.
But three weeks later, "out of the blue", Michael received a call from one of her friends telling him to leave the house. So he did — and took the lottery ticket with him, later saying that things started to get "fishy" and felt she was "up to something".
Upon returning home, Charlotte realized the ticket had been taken and got in touch with Camelot to get help with the situation.
Following some mediation, in which representatives from Camelot traveled to Lincolnshire to interview the pair separately about the dispute, they were able to get the ticket back.
Michael said that he spent Christmas Eve at Charlotte's house dressed up as Father Christmas, believing the pair had put the dispute behind them.
On January 25, a Camelot official sent a message to the former couple saying that the legal team were still deciding what to do but that a draft was being prepared regarding the sharing of the prize.
But on February 10, less than two weeks since new owner Allwyn took over the running of the National Lottery, Michael was sent a letter saying he was not entitled to any money.
Michael says he is "ready to fight", but Charlotte holds strong that his case is "rubbish", with a friend of hers telling The Sun, "You can't believe a word that man says."
According to Allwyn's rules, only the name written on the back of the ticket can claim the prize.
"The National Lottery Rules for Scratchcard Games make clear that only one person can be the owner of a ticket and that only the person whose name and address is written on the back of a winning scratchcard can claim a prize. This means that a prize can only be paid to one person and this is always communicated clearly to prize claimants," Allwyn told The Sun.
"Where a claimant agrees to share a prize with other parties (for example, players in a syndicate) after the prize has been paid, we always recommend that a legal agreement is drawn up between the interested parties. If there is no agreement in place, any dispute between the parties needs to be resolved between themselves."
Thanks for dannyct for the tip.
Good for her. One person paid out only.
A three month relationship would not entitle one to anything. She paid and they were not married.
As the Chinese proverb states, "Wind, women, and luck soon change."
* Michael blew it. A friend of Charlotte told him to leave the house & he takes the ticket with him, a ticket he didn't pay for. That's theft Mikey, and you wonder why you lost!
She shoulda bought another ticket and shown that to him as the loser ticket. Always buy two tickets.
Nope. Then when that was found out, he might have been awarded half or more.
If it was me, i'd let her have the money. As in the case of Khloe Kardashian, Wendy Williams, and many other treacherous women, her NEXT man will make her pay!
Khloe thought she was smart when she lied to her husband, Lamar ( who she never should have married) about not being able to have children. She then divorced him after he was allegedly cheating on her at a brothel. Now she's stuck with an even bigger cheater in Tristan Thompson. She doesn't seem too happy with him and his continually growing number of baby moms!
Often, a woman's next man is karma for what she did to her previous man.
Bad women are made for bad men and good women are made for good men.
The weird part is that he claims she didn't have money to buy the tickets so he transfered money to her and then she bought them, all while they were physically present together in the store. Why go through the extra unnecessary step of transferring money to someone so she can buy tickets when the shortest path between two points is for him to just buy the tickets himself?
Sometimes the little head-scratcher details make you question the entire narrative.
Why transfer the money to her when he could have bought the tickets himself?
Because guys are constantly trying to be "chivalrous" and impress women.
As the Greek proverb says, "Believe no woman even when she is dead."
He was probably just a deadbeat. She grew tired of him. Women in this country and civilized nations make their own money and often more that the man in a relationship. I know a number of women with house husbands and it is a good arrangement.
A smart man can play stupid but a stupid man can never play smart.
That's why many of the first European women to set foot on this land were prostitutes released from prisons in England and Australia.
They were sent here with the hopes that they would stop prostituting, find husbands, and learn to be decent women, but many of them quickly saw that prostitution was more profitable than marriage and that people without morals would call them "civilized".
Was wondering that myself. Doesn't make sense.
Guys do things that don't make sense everyday in the name of love.
Like the 1950's song asked, "Why Do FOOLS Fall in Love?"
i'm currently in a love triangle. i love a woman, the woman loves nobody, and nobody loves me.
He claims he attempted to transfer the money to her but had a "poor signal." She then used her card.
Hahaha that's a love Hexagon 🤣🤣🤣🤣
The first U.S Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, was the illegitimate son of a prostitute, and that is your history lesson for today.
She left her husband and children in Europe and sold herself to make money.
When asked about his wife, "She's selling herself in the Barbados", her husband would say.
Actually, he didn't say "selling herself"...he used the more ugly, accurate word to describe her "job".
Well at least she had a job. Maybe you should get a job--writing cuck fetish stories.
Prostitution isn't a "job"...it's a hustle.
Anyone with morals beyond those of an alley cat understands that.
i used to have that job. but the work dried up because people were doing for free on lottery forums.
Hamilton engaged in multiple documented affairs.
For those of you who want to learn about the consequences of committing adultery, read Sirach 23.
i read the label of a sriracha bottle to find the consequences of adultery and there was something about a burning sensation. i'm convinced now. adultery is bad.
That's a funny thing about knowing the truth. Like a scene from The Twilight Zone, nobody believes you.
I don't know what a "cuckold" is but if I posted what I think of you, they might want to ban me.
if only there were a way to look up the definition of a word.
I did, and it was so not me that I immediately forgot it.
Your in box is full.
i also forget the definitions of words that aren't me. like every time i go on the gerbil care forum i have to relookup what a gerbil is. because i'm not a gerbil.
ok i deleted all the marriage proposals garyo keeps sending me.
What I meant by "so not me" was that it didn't exist in my universe. I have no use for that word so I don't keep it in my memory.
Lol lol
The lottery winner's boyfriend believed her and you see what happened to him!
When you think about it, that Greek proverb makes a lot of sense.
Me too. I forgot the meaning of the words "Alaye" and "mumu."
A verbal agreement isn't worth the paper it's written on. That's why the lottery pays
one winner only. Good Luck!
Agreed and he apparently lies so much, who knows what was actually said.
At least she got rid of the dead weight. I doubt he can afford to launch further legal action.
So he was living with her?
That's like the male black widow spider that walked into the female's web!