Gambler battles betting giant after £1.7m win denied by ‘glitch’
A GAMBLER is fighting a legal battle over a £1.7m win after the bookmaker refused to pay up because it said his good fortune was down to a computer ‘glitch’.
Andrew Green, 54, thought he had struck lucky when he hit the jackpot in an online blackjack game in 2018.
He was initially congratulated by the bookmaker Betfred only to be informed five days later that a malfunction meant his payment was void, the High Court heard yesterday.
It was claimed that the only reason the case wasn’t about a ‘£50million or £500million’ is because Mr Green stopped
‘No reason not to pay me’
playing the game when his winnings reached £1,722,923.54.
The bookie’s lawyer Richard Osborne explained the system error meant Mr Green’s winnings kept going ‘up and up and up’ while he played Frankie Dettori’s Magic Seven game in January 2018.
Mr Osborne said the game involved ‘trophy’ cards that increased a player’s pot. ‘The defect was the trophy cards weren’t being reset,’ he said.
‘More trophy cards went in and none ever went away. Eventually every single card in the deck would have been a trophy.
‘Mr Green played for an hour and a half and the trophy cards grew and grew. Three times he won 7,000 times his stake. His number was going up and up and up. He could eventually win 7,000 times his stake as many times as he chose.’ The judge,
Mrs Justice Alison Foster, commented: ‘The case against you is t here are ways of protecting yourself from an enormous catastrophic loss that may be caused by something that’s remedial and you didn’t take them.’
Mr Osborne denied not enough was done to test the system. He said: ‘Software can contain errors and defects. These cards were meant to be random and they weren’t.’
Mr Green, from Washingborough in Lincolnshire, is suing Betfred and its parent company, Gibraltar- based Petre, f or £2million including interest.
The court was told Mr Green’s case is that it was ‘one lucky event’ and his lawyers claim the ‘pays and plays’ clause, which means winnings are voided if a machine malfunctions, cannot be used in this situation.
Speaking before the hearing, he said: ‘They have no reason not to pay me. If there was a glitch, that’s between Betfred and the software provider.
‘When I won, Betfred congratulated me on being a millionaire. They led me to think I was one. After five days I got a phone call saying there had been a software glitch which caused the payout and they would not be paying.’
Mr Green, a single parent who has had four heart attacks, has rejected an offer of £60,000 to settle the dispute. He said he was determined to carry on. ‘There’s been times when I wished I had not even won the money. I feel robbed.’
The hearing continues.