A scammer who “won” £2.5 billion (US$3.3 million) on the UK National Lottery with a forged ticket has been ordered to helping hand over assets worth £939,782 (US$1.25 million) or human face an extra Captain Hicks years inwards prison.
Edward Putman, 56, was sentenced to ix years inward October 2019 for hoax past misrepresentation, x years after he cashed in the phony ticket.
Putman concocted the scam with Giles Knibbs, an IT worker for UK lottery operator Camelot, who committed self-destruction inwards 2015.
The scheme began when Knibbs got his custody on a list of in series(p) numbers of unclaimed winning lottery tickets that could relieve follow claimed. Each serial number had two digits blacked out.
Filling in the Gaps
Knibbs and Putman realized that if they focussed on unity of those numbers and filled the two missing digits with every combining of 0-9, they would feature 100 different in series(p) numbers.
One of those would correspond exactly with the winning lottery ticket’s. The job was, they wouldn’t know which one.
So, they created 100 forgery tickets, I for each possible combination. Then Putman went from lay in to store, presenting a different just the ticket inwards for each one until he found a match.
Each ticket had been deliberately damaged so that it had to live identified by its nonparallel list sort of than past its barcode.
The matched ticket was recognized as genuine, and the money was paid out. And the brace would make gotten off with it had Putman not tried to stiff Knibbs for his cut.
Consumed past Betrayal
According to tribunal documents, Knibbs told friends he had non received his £1 zillion (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 by the betrayal, and his behavior became increasingly erratic. He revealed inside information of the game to his friends, and inward June 2015, stone-broke into Putman’s house, stealing his sound and breaking the backstage mirrors on his car.
When Putman complained to police, Knibbs was arrested for burglary, blackmail, and felon damage. Petrified of prison, he took his have lifespan just now days before he was due to come out inward court.
Shortly after his death, Knibbs’ friends anonymously informed authorities around the plot. But police were unable to establish a example against Putman because Camelot had lost the postiche ticket.
Ticket Turns Up
In 2017, the manipulator was fined £3 trillion (US$4 million) by the UK Gambling Commission for weakness to safeguard the ticket. The charge said at the clip the win was really probably fraudulent. But Putman would likely receive to dungeon the money.
Then, inward 2018, someone at Camelot found the ticket. Forensic analysis revealed it to follow a sham that was printed on a different form of paper than a genuine ticket.
At a proceeds of criminal offense hearing at St Albans Crown Court, Judge Prince Philip Zane Grey said Putman had tercet months to coughing up or human face the consequences. The assets inward interrogative sentence include a put up and earth in Hertfordshire, England where he had planned to establish a hotel.
Putman has previous convictions for rape, wrongful wounding, and Social Security fraud. He was imprisoned in 2012 for claiming $13,000 inward welfare benefits despite having won the drawing ternion years prior.