Lottery watchdog probes 'glitch'

Lottery prizes under £50,000 may have been affected

Thousands of winning lottery ticket holders could have been sold short due to a defect in the National Lottery computer software.

Many of them may have received less winnings than they were entitled to, because a glitch in the software meant that more tickets were calculated than were actually bought.

The problem, which existed from November 1994 to July 1998, was identified four weeks ago when an "outside source" made allegations to the independent National Lottery Commission.

An investigation will now have to scrutinise billions of National Lottery transactions made over the four-year period.

A Commission spokeswoman emphasised that on "very rare occasions" the computer calculated there were more winners than actually existed and divided the prize money accordingly.

Dream tickets

"The computer would think that a ticket existed but there was no ticket and one had not been bought," she said.

"When the prizes were generated, the computer would take into account the line of Lottery numbers which didn't exist."

The discovery, which was confirmed by operator Camelot and software supplier GTech, is only expected to involve small sums of money.

The spokeswoman said it was already clear that prizes of £50,000 and above were all correctly paid and the problem had not affected Thunderball tickets or Instants.

It appeared that no-one had missed a prize that was due to them, and the glitch had not "put at risk the flow of funds to good causes".

Billions of transactions must be analysed

Investigations were continuing into the causes of the defective software, which were said to have been first discovered by GTech in July 1998.

In a statement, Camelot said it had not been aware of the defect until it was informed by the commission this week.

It added: "We are co-operating fully with the National Lottery Commission in their investigations.

"Until the National Lottery Commission has completed its investigation it would be wrong for us to comment in detail on the matter."

Camelot says it believes the damage will be minimal, with an estimated 0.0007% of transactions affected.

The company said it was committed to paying the money back to winners as well as retailers who might have been overcharged.

GTech spokesman Steve White was unwilling to collaborate Camelot's statement that the fault was identified by his company in June 1998.

He would only refer to "an allegation [that] has been made about an alleged software fault".

The firm, based in West Greenwich, Rhode Island, United States, was cooperating fully with Camelot and the National Lottery Commission in their investigations, he said, but declined to comment further.