Thousands of Norwegians were wrongly told they’d bagged life-changing sums in the lottery when in fact they’d only won as little as £9 after a huge blunder by the country’s gambling company.
Scores of people who took part in Friday’s Eurojackpot thought they had become millionaires after a conversion mistake by the Norwegian operator, Norsk Tipping.
The company mistakenly multiplied by 100, instead of dividing by 100, when converting the prize amounts from Euros to Norwegian kroner.
It meant over 400,000 people who matched two main numbers and one Euro number were calculated to have won 1,262,000 kroner (£91,000), when the prize was only worth about £9.
On the night, 19,000 people received push notifications, and 13,000 received SMS messages all saying they had won millions, Norwegian news site VG reports.
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The correct prize winnings were updated on Saturday evening and no one was paid incorrectly, the gambling company said.
Norsk Tipping’s CEO Tonje Sagstuen also apologised and resigned a day later.
One mum-of-three recalled dancing with joy and crying when she was told she won 980,000 (71,000) kroner as part of a syndicate.
Her hopes of a new life were dashed 20 minutes later when she got a text saying she’d won just 97 kroner (£11).
She told VG: ‘It felt like the world’s steepest roller coaster.
‘In that quarter of an hour, I used up two million kroner in my head. I was supposed to pay off my mortgage.
‘I managed to call my dad and my oldest children are on vacation, and I was about to tip them a few kroner and say, “Have fun, buy something nice.” Fortunately, I never got around to it.’
Norsk Tipping’s board met with the Ministry of Culture on Saturday, with the CEO Sagstuen shortly after.
In a statement she accepted the mess up was a ‘breach of trust’, adding: ‘I am terribly sorry that we have disappointed so many, and I understand that people are angry with us.’
Minister Lubna Jaffery slapped down the gambling company, saying ‘such mistakes should not happen’.
The Eurojackpot is an alternative to Euromillions played in Germany, Spain, Italy, Norway and a string of other European countries.
To win the jackpot, which starts at a minimum 10 million euros (£8.5 million) you need to match five main numbers and two euro numbers.
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