16 October 2023 , 08:00
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Rewind back to Saturday 19 November 1994 and you may remember the excitement of the very first UK National Lottery draw - millions of people tuned into the BBC to watch the first game presented by Noel Edmonds in front of a live audience. The excitement was intense as the audience counted down from five to reveal the numbers that would crown seven jackpot winners, each sharing a prize of £5,874,778.
The National Lottery makes an average of seven new millionaires every week – that’s more than 6,800 millionaires across the UK since the first draw. But while there’s no doubt winning millions on the lottery could be life-changing, some fraudsters are capitalising on people’s dreams by scamming them into thinking they’ve won big. Here, we take a look at some of the biggest lottery scams.
Fraudsters posing as Gillian and Adrian Bayford
Fraudsters posed as Adrian and Gillian Bayford (Getty Images)In July 2023, fraudsters posing as EuroMillions winners Gillian and Adrian Bayford from Haverhill in Suffolk conned vulnerable victims out of their cash. The couple won a £148 million EuroMillions jackpot but scammers started to target victims promising them a share of the couple’s winnings. One victim, Glen Seeber, 67, received an email supposedly from Adrian which read: "My wife and I won the biggest EuroMillions lottery prize of 148 Million GBP.
"We just commenced our Charity Donation and we will be giving out a cash donation of 6,500,000.00 GBP to 5 lucky individuals and 10 charity organisations from any part of the world." Glen googled the company and discovered they had split since winning the jackpot. He posted "Clearly the Bayfords, who divorced, are not acting together to give away £6.5million to unknowns. This Russian idiot sending the emails is definitely NOT Gillian nor Adrian Bayford."
Antony Linton Stewart
In August 2023 nearly a dozen people were conned out of thousands of dollars after falling for a lottery scam. Antony Linton Stewart, 39, from Jamaica, confessed to stealing £1,175,595 ($1.5million) from elderly residents who were living in the US between 2010 and 2016. He phoned his victims to tell them they had won prizes worth millions before informing them they would have to pay taxes in order to secure their money.
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After being extradited from Jamaica, Stewart pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud, the US Attorney's Office for the Western District of North Carolina confirmed. In court documents filed in Charlotte, North Carolina, it states: "There was no lottery and no winnings were paid; rather, Stewart and his co-conspirators fraudulently kept the victims’ money for their own benefit".
Millions dream of winning the National Lottery (Universal Images Group via Getty Images)Frank Onyeachonam
Frank Onyeachonam, 49, was jailed for eight years in 2014 after a jury found him guilty of conspiracy to defraud following a three-week Old Bailey trial. The father-of-two targeted hundreds of vulnerable pensioners leading them to believe they had won the Australian lottery and they needed to send a modest sum to release the funds. After being jailed in 2014, Onyeachonam, formerly of Canning Town in east London, was ordered to pay back just £158,000 and jailed for eight years but the amount remains to be paid.
Crooked retailers
Lottery winners Fred and Maureen Holt collecting their £1million prize. (PA)These days, your biggest risk of being defrauded out of your lottery winnings comes from retailers. It’s not uncommon in the US, where there have been a number of such reports including one case of a New York father and son who tried to defraud one of their customers.
Grocery shop owners Nabal and Karim Jaghab tried to pay out a $1 million winning lottery ticket with $1,000 and pocket the ticket themselves but the winner was suspicious and contacted the police. A similar story in the UK emerged in 2012 when Farrakh Nizzar, a worker at Tesco Extra in Oldham, tried to cheat an elderly couple - Fred and Maureen Holt - out of their £1 million prize, telling the lady that the ticket was worthless. He was jailed for 30 months.
The following year Imran Pervais, a convenience store worker in Gravesend, Kent, tried to convince a syndicate manager his syndicate only won £10 when in fact they'd won £79,887 however he didn’t get away with it and Pervais was arrested. Though Pervais, 26 at the time, was given a 12-month suspended sentence at Maidstone Crown court by Judge David Griffiths-Jones QC who described his offence as "opportunistic" and "mean-spirited".