UK Lottery addict jailed

Posted October 2, 2010 – 8:11 pm in: UK lottery

A teenager stole thousands of lottery tickets from a shop where he worked after becoming addicted to gambling on theUK National Lottery! The UK Lottery addict is jailed this week after theft amounting to thousands of pounds in lottery tickets, an action which almost cost the business owners their livelihood. Matthew Lucey from Plymouth, Devon has now been sentenced to eight months in a young offenders institute for his actions after pleading guilty at Plymouth Crown Court.

Sadly whichever lottery in the world we are talking about, there always seems to be stories such as this one. This young man worked in a little village shop and earned just £80 a week yet the court was told he had bought a car and wore designer clothing, flashing his ‘winnings’ around.

However, while all this was happening, he was also fiddling the till in the shop and throwing away the losing lottery tickets. Eventually the shop owners, who couldn’t understand the drop in takings were forced to take out an overdraft as they feared for their business.

However, there really isn’t anything to show for the £13,000 in winnings that Mr Lucey accrued, much of it was frittered away as he became a compulsive gambler. The whole incident took place over 6-10 months and now Mr Lucey will have a few months to consider what he has done. He was eventually caught by a CCTV camera which showed him cheating the till by cancelling parts of purchases, a deceit so complicated he needs paper and a calculator next to the till.

We love writing about lottery winners on the lottery news pages, but this story really doesn’t fill us with the nice warm feeling we usually get!

In other UK National Lottery news, it’s a rollover! This Saturday’s Lotto jackpot is worth an estimated £6.8 million!