A UK couple missed out on a £35m ($44.7m) jackpot as their lottery app account didn’t have sufficient funds. David and Edwina Nyland thought they purchased a ticket for a December 2015 draw through the Lottomobile app. Their six numbers came up trumps and the big prize was over £35.4m.
ticket wasn’t valid as the transaction to purchase it didn’t go through
It didn’t take long for the ecstasy to turn into despair as an official for Camelot, the UK National Lottery’s operator at the time, told the couple that their ticket wasn’t valid as the transaction to purchase it didn’t go through due to insufficient account funds. They only had £0.60 ($0.77) in their shared account at the time, which wasn’t enough to cover the £2 ($2.56) ticket.
The Lancashire couple said they attempted to add funds to the account and didn’t realize the transaction wasn’t successful. Camelot saw the repeated attempts to purchase the ticket and explained that a user receives an error message every time that a payment fails.
Despite the heartbreak of not getting their hands on the big win, the pair kept purchasing lottery tickets in the hope of getting lucky once more.
