Lottery winners who discovered they'd won a staggering £35 million ended up as penniless as they'd been before buying the £2 ticket.
When Edwina and David Nylan entered the draw on December 23, 2015, they could never have imagined that six of the winning numbers on the Lottomobile app. In what must have initially seemed like a true Christmas miracle, the cash-strapped Nylans realised that each of their six numbers - 01 - 02 - 04 - 19 - 28 - 41 - had come up trumps, bagging them the unbelievable sum of £35,410, 034.
Their dreams came crashing down in a spectacular fashion however after they tried to claim the jackpot - all because of their empty bank account.
Grandmother Edwina, of Fleetwood, Lancashire, said at the time: "When the numbers came up, it looked like we had got all six and had won the jackpot but when I checked, there was nothing from Camelot. I rang customer services at Camelot and the person I spoke to said they could see from their records that we had intended to buy those numbers but they said the purchase did not go through because we only had 60p in our account.
"We had tried to top up the account and hadn't realised that hadn't registered either. You get an email to confirm your purchase, but I didn't remember to check because it was just before Christmas and I was so busy. Camelot has now told me they are looking into it with their IT department."
Expressing her dismay, Edwina, who did her utmost best to remain positive, continued: "I am gutted, but what can we do? We have played for years, and had our online account for some time, so it is not as if we didn't know what we were doing. I have just had to carry on with things and not get too down. Shocked isn't the word, but as a family we stick together and just have to be grateful for what we've got."
Despite having endured such a crushing disappointment, the couple also shared that they would continue playing the Lottery - hoping they might get better luck next time.
In a statement, a Camelot spokesperson said: "The player did attempt to purchase an online Lotto ticket multiple times on December 23 from 7pm onwards (the cut-off to buy tickets is 7.30pm), however, there were insufficient funds in the player's account - so the attempted purchases were not successful.
"The player would have received an error message on every occasion confirming this. We do not have any record of the player attempting to add funds to their account, nor would anyone from our customer services team have any visibility of the numbers that the player attempted to purchase because that level of detail wouldn't be shown on the screen in front of them.
"When anyone successfully purchases a ticket on the Lottery website they will see a purchase confirmation screen, receive an email confirming their purchase and be able to see the ticket in their National Lottery online account.
They added: "Only tickets that have been successfully purchased can be entered into the draw. So it is up to players to ensure that they have adequate funds in their account to complete a ticket purchase."
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