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Salesman tells boss to STICK IT after winning the lottery - then realises he LOST
Wednesday, December 06, 2006 posted 04:24 AM EST
When Steve Moseley thought he'd won £1 million on a scratchcard, he didn't hold back on the celebrations.
Overjoyed, the car salesman danced on his desk, threw money around the showroom, sent a colleague out to buy champagne and
phoned his girlfriend to break the good news.
He even told his boss: "You can stick your job, I've won the lottery."
That was at 10am. At 10.45am, his luck took a turn for the worse.
When he phoned National Lottery operator Camelot to confirm his prize, he was told he didn't have a winning ticket after
all. What he had thought were two matching 15s were in fact a 15 and a 16.
Mr Moseley said he dropped the phone, felt sick - then had to beg his boss to give him back his job.
The unfortunate saga began when Mr Moseley, 36, of Gosport, Hampshire, bought a £5 24-Karat Gold scratchcard on his way
to work at the Fortnums car dealership in Fareham.
Once at his desk he scratched off his "lucky weight" which he thought was 15g - not noticing that it said 'SXTN' underneath
- then matched it with "another" 15g weight.
"I then scratched off the bit that tells you how much you've won and it said one million," he said. "As far as I was concerned,
I was a millionaire. All my worries were gone.
"That's when I started celebrating. It was pandemonium - I was dancing all over the desks and screaming and shouting.
"I was telling people to order champagne and I actually started getting money out of my wallet and throwing it at people.
It's all quite embarrassing now."
Mr Moseley added: "My boss came in to see what was going on and I told him, 'I've won the lottery. I'm off. You can stick
your job'. There didn't seem any point carrying on with my job because as far as I was concerned I had £1 million in my
hand."
It was only after phoning girlfriend Theresa Parsons, 27, that he called Camelot.
"The woman there asked me if the text matched as well as the figures and that's when I saw one said 'FFTN' but the other
said 'SXTN'.
"I dropped the phone. I felt physically sick. I got a magnifying glass out to study the numbers and they looked right but
I realised I was never going to get the money.
"In my mind I had already ordered the Aston Martin and decided on the colour and suddenly that was taken away from me. I
had to go back to my boss and beg for my job back."
His manager, Mike Earle, said: "You see where people's loyalties lie when money like that is involved. He'd been a bit of
an idiot - I'd never seen anyone celebrating so much.
"But I felt sorry for him because I can see the numbers did look genuine on the ticket."
Mr Moseley, who has since resigned to work for another dealer, said: "That night I went out with the missus to drown my sorrows
and decided to keep the ticket as a souvenir of how close I came to being a millionaire.
"I know what it's like to win a million and what it feels like to lose a million."
A Camelot spokesman said: "We have received a very small number of queries about the 24-Karat Gold scratchcard from players
about similarities between play symbols.
"The numeric weights are duplicated by a play caption in words underneath each nugget of gold. We always advise players to
check that their ticket definitely is a winner before they take any action."
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