Spoof National Lottery claim for £250,000 goes viral

"Hi National Lottery. I bought this scratchcard recently and as you can clearly see I have revealed 3 £250,000 figures in the end column, meaning I should be able to start shopping at Waitrose in the near future." wrote Jonny Smith, of Ossett in West Yorkshire on the National Lottery Facebook page.

Unfortunately, he adds, the card has been a little bit damaged, but he hopes he'll get getting his winner's cheque shortly.

He admits: "Unfortunately both bar codes on the reverse side have been removed by a small fire. This completely accidental inferno has also damaged the game number on the front side."

As for the identifying number in the game column, he explains that he "spilt pen ink" on it - in an accident that looks remarkably like he has scribbled the number out.

The more sharp-eyed Facebookers will also notice that the top £250,000 in the column appears to have been clumsily hacked out of another game and balanced on this card.

However, Jonny optimistically signs off: "Just to conclude, if you don't mind sending me a direct message to confirm that this is a winner I would be more than happy to pass on my postal address so you can send me my winners cheque."
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Response

The spoof claim has tickled lottery fans, in the wake of Susanne Hinte's famous claim that she had won £33 million on the National Lottery but put the ticket in the wash - before the real owner of the ticket came forward to claim the prize. The post has been liked more than 43,000 times, and shared more than 20,000.

Camelot, meanwhile, has shown signs that it may not be taking the claim entirely at face value. Yesterday on Facebook it responded: "We have investigated this image for you, we can tell that the 'small fire' that the scratchcard was involved with, was very selective and clearly didn't like the barcodes, we suggest that you completely fire proof your home to avoid such instances from happening again."

To guard against more 'ink spillages', it suggested that he stuck to using pencils in future. It then added: "Furthermore, looking at the image very closely it has come to our attention that the extra £250,000 on the top right hand corner has been placed carefully, however we recommend that you invest in some proper glue."

And it signed off: "We won't be sending you a direct message requesting your details as this won't be necessary, we would like to thank you for your time to contact us, we wish you every success in the future with our games - and maybe, just maybe one day you will be able to shop at Waitrose."

Adding: " If you are unhappy with the outcome you can email us on: thisisnotawin@national-lottery.co.uk for further investigation." The National Lottery reply has been liked more than 80,000 times.

Surprising, some of the many thousands responding to the initial post seemed not to realise it was a joke, and felt compelled to point out that the card may have been tampered with.

One user, meanwhile, suggested: "I feel honesty should prevail in this matter, so I will personally send you another £2 to cover the cost of a replacement scratchcard, all I require is your personal details, if you could PM me your card number, expiry date, and security number, I will send the money ASAP."