Couple battle over €1m 'joint' Lotto scratch card amid messy breakup

A couple engaged in a messy breakup are at loggerheads over who is the rightful recipient of a scratch card windfall worth over €1 million.

Michael Cartlidge and Charlotte Cox were the lucky winners of the seven-figure sum after Charlotte bought the scratch card, but the 37-year-old left the relationship soon after, meaning she would be gifted the life-changing money.

Michael, 39, is not taking the breakup well and his anger does not seem to be motivated by a broken heart. He claims it was his idea to buy the scratch card and that he even tried to send Charlotte the money to buy it, as reported in the Mirror.

Such are the high stakes involved in this scenario, UK lottery organisers Camelot have gone as far as examining CCTV footage of the shop in Spalding, Lincolnshire, where the couple bought the card.

According to Michael, Camelot indicated the winnings would be split.

However, the new owners of the lottery, Allwyn, are instead ruling Charlotte as the rightful claimant. Michael, a security engineer, says he is now considering legal action.

He said: “I am in shock. I can openly admit that we wouldn’t have got that ticket without Charlotte, but she wouldn’t have got it without me either. I know it was her bank account that paid for it, but it should go 50-50 morally.”

Charlotte is not taking Michael’s claims lying down, however, as she insists she has every right to the money after paying for the scratch card with her own money and being the one to scratch it, revealing the winnings.

A source close to her said: “One million pounds has never brought so much misery. It’s ruined the last three months for her and her family. Mike has no right to this money. He is not a nice person. Charlotte won, she paid for the ticket and she scratched the ticket. The case is closed.”

The couple had been dating for three months when the fiasco began. They popped to their local Lidl to buy dinner on a Friday night when they made the impulse purchase from a shop next door.

“She said she didn’t have the money to spend on scratchcards, but I said I’d transfer her the money. We were in the shop and I went on my Halifax app because I didn’t have my bank card. I started the transfer, I held it up to show her. You can see me doing this on the shop CCTV, which Camelot has.”

As if the story needed any more drama, Michael was unable to send the money for the scratch card to Charlotte due to bad WiFi signal. This meant Charlotte paid for it herself and when the couple arrived home, they discovered they were about to become €1 million power couple – or so they thought.

Three weeks after the win, they met with officials at their local NatWest to discuss private banking for their win, which they were planning to use to buy a three-bed home and a new car. But Michael was floored when Charlotte reportedly asked him via a friend to leave. He did so, taking the winning ticket with him.

Michael insists that he tried to pay for the ticket, but Charlotte and sources close to her say that this is untrue and that the money is hers

The ugly side of money revealed itself soon after as the acrimony of a bad breakup was compounded by the lust for riches.

Ultimately, Michael is in possession of the scratch card, but it is in Charlotte’s name. He handed the card to Camelot’s legal team on November 21, and a rep interviewed them separately about the dispute.

An official message sent to the couple in January revealed the decision had been passed to the legal team over the possible split of the prize. But earlier this month, any hopes of the cash being split fell apart when Michael was sent a letter saying he was not entitled to any of it.

Allwyn, now the new owners of the lottery since the end of January, state that only the person whose name is written on the card can claim the prize, no splits allowed.

A spokesperson said: “The National Lottery Rules for Scratchcard Games make clear that only one person can be the owner of a ticket and that only the person whose name and address is written on the back of a winning scratchcard can claim a prize.

“This means that a prize can only be paid to one person and this is always communicated clearly to prize claimants. Where a claimant agrees to share a prize with other parties (for example, players in a syndicate) after the prize has been paid, we always recommend that a legal agreement is drawn up between the interested parties. If there is no agreement in place, any dispute between the ­parties needs to be resolved between themselves.”

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