Irish Lotto Winners Plan to Buy Indoor Slide

A couple in their early 40s say they will spend some of their €7.3 million Irish Lotto winnings on a dream house, complete with pinball table and indoor slide! The pair eventually came forward to collect their bounty after matching all six main numbers in the draw on Saturday 19th September on a ticket bought from the Supervalu shop at Dun Laoghaire’s Killiney Shopping Centre.

Their entry was valid for eight draws and the couple admitted they didn’t usually check their numbers until all the draws had been played, but as the husband recalled in The Journal, “I’d heard on the radio that a syndicate had won the jackpot, and I usually wait until the 8 draws are over on the ticket before I check it. So I put it into a ticket checker in a shop in Killiney and the message told me to contact National Lottery offices.

I thought “that’s strange” so when I went back to the office, I put in the numbers on the web checker and all these fireworks went off. But I still didn’t believe anything great had happened.”

It was only after he returned home and checked again online that the family began to accept that they were due a big payday. They celebrated with their young children by going out for desserts and have now compiled a wish list for their newfound fortune.

The indoor slide will be a major feature of the family’s new dream home, for which they are now hunting after years of renting. They also intend to buy a popcorn maker, install a home cinema and take trips to Disneyland in Florida, Jamaica and to Venezuela to witness lightning storms.

If you would like to follow in their footsteps, Irish Lotto tickets are on sale for tonight’s €3.5 million draw and you can get hold of them at authorised retailers in Ireland or through the link on the homepage, wherever you are. good luck!

Skipton Man Reveals Winning Lotto Method after Landing £2.2 Million

A Lotto player from Skipton who scooped £2.2 million with his wife by playing online has revealed that he used a random number generator to pick his winning line. Peter and Claire Occardi matched all six main numbers drawn on Wednesday 16th September to pick up the life-changing prize and he is delighted he stuck to his method of selection.

“I’m a bit of a geek and I used a scientific calculator to generate random numbers. It’s an electronic means of picking the numbers out of a hat” – Peter, a self-employed engineer originally from Glasgow, explained, before admitting that it took him a little while to realise that they had landed a seven-figure fortune.

He recalled in the Express: “I checked my emails, as I do every morning, and noticed I had a message from the National Lottery asking me to check my account. We’d had a similar email last week and we had won £25, so initially I thought it would be another of the same so I didn’t really think much of it. On first glance at my phone I thought we’d won just over £2,000, but I looked again and realised there were too many digits.”

Peter has now set his sights on buying a plane, having just been granted a pilot’s licence this summer, while he has also found a new nickname for his wife inspired by the sitcom Only Fools and Horses. He said: “I’ve started calling her Rodney, which I don’t think she appreciates – ‘this time tomorrow, Rodney, we’ll be millionaires’.”

Claire does not intend to accompany Peter when he takes to the air, as she said in the Express and Star that, “keeping my feet on the ground is definitely where I prefer to be”, but, like her husband, she has no plans to quit work. Peter stated: “Claire really wants to go into property and business coaching and I’ve always wanted to set up my own manufacturing business, and now I can.”

The Lotto jackpot has been won in seven out of eight draws since the start of the month and another top prize of £2 million will be available in the next draw on Wednesday 30th September. You can buy tickets now from authorised retailers or play online just like Peter Occardi as you try to become the latest big winner!

EuroMillions Winners Claim £1 Million after Two-Month Delay

A couple who play EuroMillions online have admitted they did not know they had scooped £1 million for two months after ignoring an email from lottery officials. Ruth and Peter Doyle, from Lyneham in Wiltshire, won the Millionaire Maker prize on Tuesday 23rd June but were initially oblivious to their success.

Having received an email telling her she had won and to log on to her account, Ruth only checked her bank account rather than her National Lottery account and found that £25 had gone in. She did not look any further and the penny only dropped in late August when a lottery official rang to enquire why she had not collected her money.

“When I got the call telling me I’d won I thought it was a wind-up” said Ruth, who admitted it took a few days for the news to sink in. The couple finally decided to reveal all just in time for their eighth wedding anniversary and they were able to celebrate with a party at the venue where they got married. Ruth and David have no plans to stop working, but are looking forward to paying off their mortgage, looking after their family and going on holiday to Spain.

If Ruth and David had not played online, their story could have had a less fortunate ending as there would not have been anyone to remind them to check their account. Sadly, stories do keep cropping up of prizes going unclaimed as tickets bought in shops are lost or forgotten. Buying EuroMillions tickets online ensures that you get email alerts for winning tickets, provides an increased level of security and means you don’t even have to leave home to stroll down to the nearest authorised retailer.

The EuroMillions jackpot currently stands at £17 million (€24 million) ahead of the draw on Friday 4th September after nobody landed the top prize on Tuesday night. The non-cash prize for September’s Mega Friday draw has also been announced, with five lucky Millionaire Maker winners not only set to receive a seven-figure windfall but also travel around the world first class and visit three five-star hotels in different countries if they win big later this month.

Augusts EuroMillions Mega Friday Prize Revealed

August’s EuroMillions Mega Friday draw is set for Friday 28th August and will see ten Millionaire Maker winners each bag £1 million and a luxurious private island getaway to the tropical Song Saa resort off the coast of Cambodia.

Winners and their three guests will receive return flights to Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, luxuriating in business class where it is available. From there, the trappings of the high life keep on coming, with a speedboat transfer to the beautiful twin islands that will be their home for seven nights.

The islands are connected by a bridge which crosses the crystal clear waters of a marine reserve, teeming with tropical fish, seahorses and turtles. Winners will be put up in a plush two-bedroom villa and will be able to take advantage of the facilities at the resort, from scuba diving and kayaking to spending some of their cash prize in the island paradise’s own exclusive fashion boutique. If that sounds too much like hard work, there are peaceful sandy beaches on which to curl up with a good book and catch some rays.

The holiday is on a full board basis, with drinks included and meals taken at the resort’s world-class restaurant, situated in a stunning position in the middle of the sea, just off the island’s shoreline.

Everyone who buys EuroMillions tickets in the UK for the draw on Friday 28th August will receive one Millionaire Maker code for each line played in the main game. Of all those generated, ten are guaranteed to be winners, making their owners instant millionaires and providing them with the opportunity to visit this beautiful corner of Southeast Asia.

EuroMillions returns tonight with a jackpot worth £10 million (€15 million) and tickets are on sale now online and from authorised retailers until 7:30pm (BST) 8:30pm (CEST). Good luck!

Former Lottery Worker Found Guilty of Fraud

Eddie Raymond Tipton, a former Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL) employee accused of rigging a Hot Lotto draw to win $14.3 million, has been been found guilty of fraud. As the security director for MUSL, Tipton was not allowed to play the lottery or claim any prizes, but it was alleged that he bought a ticket for the draw in question in December 2010 and later had a friend try to cash in the money. Tipton pleaded not guilty to all charges, but a jury took just five hours to reach its decision and he now faces a lengthy prison sentence.

Prosecutors argued that Tipton had not only played the lottery but had also fixed the draw to make sure that he would win by tampering with the system. It was claimed that his position at the MUSL gave him the opportunity to install a rootkit to override the machine that generates the winning numbers, and that he changed the camera settings to record footage of the draw room at a rate of one second per minute to give him enough time to pull off the feat.

Tipton’s defence lawyer dismissed the theory that the computer had been manipulated and also insisted that he was not the man seen in a surveillance video showing the moment the ticket was purchased at a Des Moines store on 23rd December 2010. It was argued that Tipton was clean-shaven when the entry was bought and the person in the film had a beard, while there were witness testimonies from his family members suggesting he had different mannerisms than that of the man in the video.

However, other witnesses agreed with the prosecution that the man in the footage looked like, acted like and sounded like Tipton, while a licence plate in the store’s parking lot was also linked to Tipton. The case had already begun to arouse suspicions back in 2011, when a New York attorney named Crawford Shaw came forward to claim the money on behalf of a Belize-based corporation. He had the winning ticket but refused to identify who had bought it and the claim was later withdrawn, with no money paid out.

Assistant Attorney General of Iowa Rob Sand is happy the jury has now found Tipton guilty, telling Channel 13 News: “I think that we had a very strong case of circumstantial evidence, so even though there was not direct evidence in the terms of what we can actually show about the computers since it had been wiped clean, they were still able to understand from all of the circumstances, the defendant’s guilt.”

Tipton will be sentenced in September and could go to prison for up to ten years, although his lawyer Dean Stowers says there will be an appeal and does not expect the verdict to stand.

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