UK Lottery Fraudster to Cough Up £1M or Face Six More Years in Prison

A scammer who “won” £2.5 billion (US$3.3 million) on the UK National Lottery with a forged just the ticket has been ordered to paw over assets worth £939,782 (US$1.25 million) or face an duplicate sixer years in prison.

Edward Putman, 56, was sentenced to IX years inward Oct 2019 for dupery by misrepresentation, tenner years after he cashed inward the fake ticket.

Putman concocted the cozenage with Giles Knibbs, an IT worker for UK lottery manipulator Camelot, who committed felo-de-se inwards 2015.

The connive began when Knibbs got his hands on a lean of series numbers of unclaimed winning lottery tickets that could stock-still live claimed. Each in series(p) number had II digits blacked out.

Filling inwards the Gaps

Knibbs and Putman realized that if they focussed on single of those numbers and filled the 2 missing digits with every compounding of 0-9, they would feature 100 different series numbers.

One of those would correspond exactly with the winning lottery ticket’s. The job was, they wouldn’t cognize which one.

So, they created 100 counterfeit tickets, i for each possible combination. Then Putman went from lay in to store, presenting a different fine inwards apiece until he found a match.

Each fine had been deliberately damaged so that it had to be identified past its series keep down instead than past its barcode.

The matched just the ticket was recognised as genuine, and the money was paid out. And the couple would hold gotten aside with it had Putman non tried to stiff Knibbs for his cut.

Consumed by Betrayal

According to royal court documents, Knibbs told friends he had non received his £1 jillion (US$1.3 million) portion from Putman. Evidence suggests he was paid no more to a greater extent than £480,000 (US$642,000) in total.

Knibbs was consumed past the betrayal, and his conduct became increasingly erratic. He revealed details of the plot to his friends, and in June 2015, skint into Putman’s house, stealing his phone and breaking the backstage mirrors on his car.

When Putman complained to police, Knibbs was arrested for burglary, blackmail, and crook damage. Petrified of prison, he took his possess life simply years before he was due to appear in court.

Shortly after his death, Knibbs’ friends anonymously informed authorities nearly the plot. But law were unable to build a slip against Putman because Camelot had missed the simulated ticket.

Ticket Turns Up

In 2017, the manipulator was fined £3 million (US$4 million) past the UK Gambling Commission for flunk to safeguard the ticket. The military commission said at the time the win was rattling in all likelihood fraudulent. But Putman would likely have to dungeon the money.

Then, inwards 2018, someone at Camelot found the ticket. Forensic analysis revealed it to follow a fake that was printed on a different sort of paper than a genuine ticket.

At a proceeds of criminal offence sense of hearing at St Albans Crown Court, Judge Duke of Edinburgh Lady Jane Grey said Putman had terzetto months to cough up or human face the consequences. The assets inward oppugn include a domiciliate and ground inwards Hertfordshire, England where he had planned to build a hotel.

Putman has previous convictions for rape, unlawful wounding, and Social Security fraud. He was imprisoned inward 2012 for claiming $13,000 inwards welfare benefits despite having won the drawing threesome years prior.