IT’S made thousands of ordinary folk rich, but over the last three decades the National Lottery has seen its fair share of scandals involving big winners.
Today it was revealed Camelot, the organisation that has run the UK competition since it was launched in 1994, is to lose its licence, with Czech-owned company Allwyn set to take over from 2024.
Camelot, owned by a Canadian teachers’ pension fund, has raised over £45billion for good causes and recently made a generous £1million donation to The Sun’s Ukraine fund.
During its time in charge, over 6,000 Brits have been lucky enough to be made millionaires.
But while most of those winners were deserving, others got into trouble with the law.
Here we take a look at the biggest National Lottery scandals.
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Camelot was fined £3million for accepting a fraudulent £2.5m claim by convicted rapist Edward Putman.
The former bricklayer, who raped a 17-year-old girl, conspired with a security worker who worked for the firm, Giles Knibbs, who had access to the numbers of unclaimed winning tickets, to forge one in 2009.
Putman scooped the cash while on leave from an open prison, and bought a £700,000 house in Hertfordshire.
But it all went pear-shaped when he refused to give Knibbs his share, short-changing him by handing over £330K instead of £1m.
Knibbs, 38, took his own life in 2015, after confessing his crime to friends, and in 2019 Putman, 56, was jailed for nine years for his part in the fraud.
Putman was warned by a judge in January that he faced an extra six years behind bars if he doesn’t hand back nearly £1million in assets.
Mark Goodram and Jon Watson danced with joy in a south London shop after they scooped £4million on a scratchcard.
The only problem was, the friends from Bolton, Greater Manchester, had bought the ticket by using someone else’s nicked debit card.
Goodram, 38, made up a story about how he’d come into possession of the card when trying to claim the winnings in 2019.
Both him and Watson, 34, were jailed for 18 months in December after pleading guilty to fraud.
Convicted thug Michael Carroll was still wearing an electronic tag and working as a binman when he bought a £9.7million winning ticket aged 19 in 2002.
But his crippling drug habit saw him blow all of his fortune on boozy binges, brothels, sex parties and fast cars.
Carroll, 38, from Norfolk, dubbed the “Lotto lout”, admitted: “The dealer who introduced me to crack has more of my lotto money than I do.”
He was handed an ASBO for terrorising his neighbours, and in 2004 he was banged up for five months in 2004 when he failed to comply with a drug treatment order. He went to prison again in 2006 for affray.
By 2013 he was bankrupt and on benefits, while his wife left him for allegedly cheating on her with prostitutes.
However, the couple – who share a daughter – remarried in October last year and now reportedly live a quiet life in Belfast.
Matt Topham and his partner Cassey Carrington won over £45million at the age of just 23 in 2012.
But tragedy struck on Christmas day in 2019 when Topham drove his BMW X6 into the front of a Ford Fiesta in North Cockerington, Lincolnshire.
He had made the fatal error of trying to retrieve his son’s teddy while driving and as a result 75-year-old Jane Regler died.
Topham, 31, admitted careless driving last year and was handed a 16 week prison sentence suspended for two years.
Iorworth Hoare managed to win £7.2million on the National Lottery in 2004 despite serving a life sentence for attempted rape.
Hoare had been jailed in 1989 for the daylight attack and brought the ticket while on weekend leave.
His victim Shirley Woodman, who died last month aged 92, successfully campaigned for the law to be changed so that she could sue Hoare for damages.
Hoare, 69, now known as Edward Thomas, was a serial sexual offender with one rape, three attempted rapes and two indecent assaults.
Even though the National Lottery is for adults only, some scratchcards appeared to appeal to children.
A decade ago the National Lottery Commission made the controversial decision to approve cards featuring board games such as Mouse Trap and Monopoly – and in 2003 Camelot sold ones with Lord of the Rings imagery.
This was despite evidence that seven per cent of 11 to 15-year-olds were gambling illegally by buying scratchcards.
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Camelot went on to employ secret shoppers to spy on dodgy shops suspected of selling to underage users, and last year the age limit was raised from overs-15s to 17-plus.
For help and support, contact Samaritans, www.samaritans.org, 116 123.
