Conman guilty of £2.5m lottery ticket fraud

A conman has been found guilty of cashing in a fake National Lottery ticket to claim a £2.5m jackpot.

Edward Putman, 54, claimed he had found the winning ticket under a seat in his van in 2009 just before the deadline to claim the win passed.

But St Albans Crown Court heard Putman, of Kings Langley in Hertfordshire, was helped by Camelot insider Giles Knibbs who knew how to cheat the system.

He denied fraud by false representation but a jury found him guilty.

The court heard the fraud came to light after Mr Knibbs, who worked for Camelot in the fraud detection department, took his own life in October 2015.

Putman had claimed the win on 28 August 2009 by using a badly-damaged ticket forged by Mr Knibbs.

Mr Knibbs had seen a document containing details of big wins which had not yet been claimed and prosecutor James Keeley said there was “some trial and error” in producing the a successful forgery.

The court heard each ticket had one of the 100 different possible unique codes at the bottom and Putman had gone to 29 different shops, providing a different ticket in each, before the right number was found at a shop in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire.

Image copyright South Beds News Agency

Image caption Camelot verified the ticket was genuine and paid out

Mr Knibbs confessed to friends that he had “conned” the Lottery after a row with Putman about how the winnings were divided in June 2015.

He also told them about technical inaccuracies in the creation of the ticket that Putman, of Station Road, had used.

Convicted rapist and benefits cheat Putman was paid the jackpot by Camelot despite the bottom part of the mangled slip missing the barcode, the trial heard.

Camelot paid out for the win in September 2009 but the genuine winning ticket, which was bought in Worcester, has never been discovered.

A Camelot spokeswoman said that there were “some weaknesses in some of the specific controls relevant to this incident at the time and we’re very sorry for that”.

“We’ve strengthened our processes significantly since then and are completely confident that an incident of this nature could not happen today,” she added.