[Ammi]

Tom Gray thought he had hit the jackpot when he found two matching numbers on his National Lottery scratchcard.


When he saw the pair of dice, each with four dots, the 75-year-old cancer patient couldn’t wait to start planning how he would spend his £80,000 winnings – on his children and grandchildren.


But when his daughter Alison Gray tried to help him claim his prize, Lottery officials told her he had only won £2


It appears that a printing error had deleted part of the scratchcard and that one of the dice was supposed to have five dots.


Mr Gray, who was diagnosed with prostate cancer in October, had hoped to share the money with his four children and eight grandchildren.


The former gas and central heating fitter, from Harold Hill in Essex, said: ‘[The card] said if you match the dots on the dice you’ve won, and the dice showed four dots on each.

‘It’s their fault if there’s a printing error. I hope they realise it’s their mistake.’

Miss Gray, 51, added: ‘I was gutted for my dad because he had already started thinking about what he was going to do for his kids. That’s what he’s mostly upset about. He’s really down about it.


‘It seems so unfair. Even if it is a misprint, whose fault is that?’


Miss Gray, an accountant for Ford Credit, has been caring for her father since he fell ill. She bought two scratchcards, for him and for herself, from a Tesco near Romford, Essex, last month.


The scratchcard Mr Gray used has a line through it on which no black ink has printed.


It runs through one of the dice, covering the area where a fifth dot would have appeared. Miss Gray said: ‘My dad scratched off his and got to the second dice then passed it over to me and said, “I can’t believe it”.


The £2 Lucky Streak card offers a prize if the player has two identical dice – which Mr Gray says he did.


In Mr Gray’s case, the prizes offered were £10, £50, £5,000 and £80,000, with the top prize listed alongside the two dice that appeared to have four spots.


Camelot say he is entitled to £2. It appears that he won this from another game on the same card.
Miss Gray said: ‘He started listing what he’d spend the cash on, like paying his car off, and he asked me how much was left on my mortgage.’


But when she rang to claim the money, she was told the card was not listed as a jackpot winner in the central database


She added: ‘I called up the number on the back and gave them the serial numbers but the woman said “you’ve won £2”.’


A spokesman for Camelot, the operator of the National Lottery, said this is the first time a query has been raised about a win on their Lucky Streak scratchcard.


The spokesman said: ‘In order to look into this further, we would need the player to post the scratchcard to us. This is so we can determine what might have happened to this particular card.’
She added: ‘It is worth noting that the outcome of each National Lottery scratchcard game is predetermined at the time of print and all our operations and processes are subject to the scrutiny of our own internal auditors, independent external auditors and representatives from our regulator, the Gambling Commission.’


Lucky Streak scratchcards come printed with two games, offering eight opportunities to win differing cash prizes. They have been on the market since the beginning of September.


To date, £15.2million has been paid out in prizes, including five top prizes of £80,000.


The company says there is a one in four chance of winning a prize on each card


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