Welcome back, Millionaire! Imagine how great it would feel if you checked your lottery ticket
and realized the numbers matched. You've won! Amazing, right? Now you've got a
lot to do - like shopping online for everything you couldn't afford before.
Or booking an exotic holiday. Or browsing for a new house. Oh, and don't forget to actually cash
in your ticket. That's probably what happened when these people heard they'd won the lottery.
Sadly for them, when they went to collect their winnings, their dreams came crashing down. Did
you know the lottery can refuse to pay out your winnings? I didn't. This has happened a few times
in the history of lottery games. Here are six times people won the lottery but were never paid.
6. South Carolina Code Error On Christmas Day, 2017, thousands
of South Carolina residents received the best Christmas gift they've ever been given - they won
the lottery. Of course, the people buying these winning tickets didn't realize they were one of
thousands. They thought they'd won, but you can probably tell there's something fishy going on.
Two days later, the South Carolina Education Lottery made a statement that squashed everyone's
dreams. According to them, the winning tickets resulted from a coding error.
The people responsible were Intralot - the lottery's system supplier at the time.
Obviously, they were very quickly fired after this huge mistake and replaced by IGT,
who now manages the lottery's computer systems. But what happened to the winners? Sadly, they were
told that their tickets were all invalid, thanks to the incorrect code in the system. The ticket
holders were allowed to send in their tickets for a refund. But if you think you've won the lottery,
a refund on your ticket isn't exactly the kind of payout you were hoping for. So,
of course, many disappointed winners tried their luck at a lawsuit. But it never came
to anything - the lottery wouldn't budge, and their hopes of a win went up in smoke.
Think that's a sad story? The story that took our number 1 spot
is way worse. Keep watching to find out what happened!
5. English Thieves Everyone loves stories about
British criminals - just look at the success of Peaky Blinders! So here's another one for you.
In April 2019, Mark Goodram was released from prison. He decided to celebrate by meeting up with
his friend and fellow criminal, Jon-Ross Watson. The pair figured it was a lucky day for Goodram,
so they went out to buy a scratch-off lottery ticket. However, there was one flaw in their
plan - they had no money. But that's not the worst thing in the world when you're a criminal,
and they did what any thief would do - they stole someone's debit card and used it to
buy the ticket. And, miraculously, they won. The prize was 4 million British pounds, or just under
$5 million. It would have been an incredible win if they hadn't made one huge mistake. When
the UK National Lottery called them to ask where to send their winnings, the men said they didn't
have a bank account for the deposit. Oops. How can you have a debit card without a bank account?
This set off some red flags at the lottery, and they finally worked out that the debit card they
used to purchase the ticket wasn't theirs. While the lottery was investigating, the two thieves
were out on the town on a four-day-long spending spree. They were in and out of expensive bars
and nightclubs, wasting their lottery winnings that they didn't have yet. And they wouldn't get
it either. The lottery refused to pay them. Of course, a lengthy legal battle followed,
as the two criminals tried to claim the prize anyway. At one point, they tried to convince
everyone that they had borrowed the debit card from their friend John. But they had
no contact information for this mysterious John character, and he never came forward to confirm
their story because it's pretty difficult for imaginary people to serve as a witness.
The prize was put on hold while the legal battle was raging, so nobody else could win it either.
Do you think they should have been paid out? Let us know in the comments!
4. Poor Illinois
Knowing you've won the jackpot has got to be one of the greatest feelings ever. Unless you
happened to win in Illinois in 2015. Apparently, the state had a couple of budgeting problems,
and they couldn't pay out jackpot wins anymore. So, one by one, Illinois residents won jackpots.
But, when they checked up on their winnings, they were told that no prize over $600 was being paid
out anymore. And this wasn't the first time. A few months earlier, jackpot winners who were expecting
to be handed a giant check were instead receiving IOUs, documents that stated that Illinous had a
debt to be paid to the person who received it. Can you imagine the disappointment? But these kinds of
problems usually get worse instead of better. All those IOUs added up to an incredible debt - soon,
it was a $120 billion deficit. It got so bad that they had to stop selling Powerball and Mega
Millions tickets completely. On top of that, angry winners were also suing the state for not paying.
Luckily for everyone, by 2017, the state had regained control of their funds, and they actually
did start paying out the winners! Hopefully, everyone received all the money they were owed.
3. $1 Million in the trash Checking your numbers can be
pretty exciting. The two roommates from this story, Erick and Salvatore, decided to check
their Powerball numbers together. Erick read the numbers out loud while Salvatore checked
the ticket. When the numbers Erick read out didn't match the ones on the ticket in Salvatore's hand,
he did what any of us would do - he crumpled up the ticket and threw it in the trash. But that
turned out to be a huge mistake. Erick was reading the numbers off the lottery website,
thinking he couldn't go wrong. But the website hadn't been updated yet. The numbers he had in
front of him were from the previous draw. It sounds like everyone's worst nightmare - if
he'd just checked the website a few minutes later, he would've read out numbers that matched
the ones on the ticket. They'd actually won $1 million. By the time they realized their mistake,
the garbage men had already come and carried off the $1 million ticket in their truck. They got a
lawyer involved and even traced the ticket all the way to a landfill in Ontario before nearly
getting a bloodhound to try and sniff it out. Tragically, it was never found, and even though
they could prove they had bought tickets, they couldn't claim the prize without that winning
ticket that was sitting in a pile of trash. I hope we never have to find out what that feels like.
2. 6 Months Late Back in 2001, a British couple won 3 million
British pounds in the UK lottery - the equivalent of about $3.75 million. That's a pretty impressive
and potentially life-changing jackpot. But their big moment didn't go the way they would've hoped.
They never checked their ticket and only realized they'd won 6 months later when the lottery sent
out an appeal for the winners to come forward. Because they played the same numbers every week,
they knew they were the ones the lottery was looking for. They must have been so excited...
right up until they realized the ticket was missing. That was just the start of the emotional
rollercoaster for the couple. They set out to access computer records in the hopes that would
prove they had purchased a ticket with the winning numbers. And, incredibly, they found proof! But
there was a catch. The lottery rules state that lost tickets must be reported within 30 days,
otherwise they're no longer valid. Even with proof, the couple still couldn't claim the
prize without the ticket. The lottery deliberated for a full 45 days while Martyn and Kay anxiously
waited for news. Finally, they were told they were not going to receive the prize.
They set up a campaign for help, and even Richard Branson stepped forward to offer support, but the
lottery wouldn't change their mind. Sadly, all the stress eventually ended in their divorce. I
don't know about you, but I'm keeping all lottery tickets in their own special box from now on.
If you think that story was sad, brace yourself - this is the story that took our number 1 spot.
1. Payment glitch This young couple from England
received a pretty harsh life lesson when they narrowly missed winning a jackpot in May 2022.
Rachel was just 19, and Liam was 21 this year when they started playing the lottery. They played the
same numbers every week via an online lottery platform. Cleverly, they'd set up their profile
so it would automatically buy a ticket with their numbers every week. Well, it seemed clever anyway.
One week, they checked the winning numbers on the lottery website and couldn't believe what
they saw. All their numbers matched for a winning jackpot of 182 million British pounds! And yes,
that's exactly as much money as it sounds - just less than a whopping $227 million.
That kind of jackpot win sure doesn't happen every day - and tragically, it hadn't happened
that day either. They had made a little mistake that meant their payment hadn't gone through when
the system automatically bought the ticket. It seems really unfair that they were never
notified that the purchase had failed - they could have fixed the problem if they had known. Instead,
Rachel called up the lottery only to be told that, even though she had the right numbers,
she had no ticket. And obviously, no ticket means no win. The couple said they were absolutely
heartbroken when they found out - I'd say it sounds like they took the news quite well.
Hopefully, we can all learn from this mistake - always check you have your ticket before the draw!