Thousands of National Lottery players were incorrectly told that their ticket was a losing one in a huge blunder.
The Gambling Commission fined Camelot, the lottery’s operator, £3.15m over three “failures which negatively impacted customers”.
One of the failures saw up to 20,000 lottery players told that their ticket was a non-winner when they scanned it through a QR scanner on the National Lottery mobile app.
Tickets purchased between November 2016 and September 2020 were affected.
A further 22,210 who purchased a single ticket through the app were also charged for and received two tickets instead.
Players affected by the second failure have now been identified and have been refunded the duplicate wager.
Duplicate wagers, which resulted in winning tickets, had their winnings honoured.
Users who had either self-excluded through Gamstop or were identified by Camelot as showing signs of gambling harm also found to have been sent marketing messages through the app.
None of the 65,400 players that received the marketing messages were permitted by the app to purchase a National Lottery product.
Andrew Rhodes, Gambling Commission Chief Executive, said: “We are reassured that Camelot has taken steps to make sure that their National Lottery app is fit for purpose.
“However we must caution Camelot that any failings on their duties will be met with consequences. Today’s announcement reinforces that any operator failing to comply with their licence requirements will be investigated by the Commission and we will not hesitate to issue fines if requirements are breached.”
In response to the Gambling Commission’s findings, a Camelot spokesperson said: “We accept the outcome of the Gambling Commission’s investigation in respect of three unrelated historical incidents. We are sorry that some of our controls fell short of the mark in certain very specific circumstances and have paid the fine.
“We always strive to operate The National Lottery to the highest possible standards and, given its scale and complexity, we’re proud of our track record of running The National Lottery with extremely high levels of integrity.
“We welcome the Gambling Commission’s recognition that, as soon as the issues became known to us, we reported them and acted promptly to resolve them. We’re also pleased that the Commission makes clear that we did not act negligently, and that there was no negative impact on returns to Good Causes or financial benefit to Camelot.“
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