A Norwegian lottery company on Monday apologised to 47,000 crestfallen gamblers who were mistakenly told they had won huge sums in a lottery, the firm blaming a currency conversion error.<\/p>\n
State-owned gambling group Norsk Tipping said they had published incorrect prize amounts after a Eurojackpot draw on Friday because of an error converting from euro cents to Norwegian kroner.<\/p>\n
The winnings had been multiplied by 100 instead of being divided by 100, the company said.<\/p>\n
Among the disappointed was Ole Fredrik Sveen, who was on holiday in Greece when he received a message from Norsk Tipping that he had won 1.2 million kroner ($119,000).<\/p>\n
“I thought: ‘Wow, is it finally my turn? Could it be true?’ I go onto the Norsk Tipping website, and there it says in black and white: ‘Congratulations, you have won!’,” Sveen told public broadcaster NRK on Monday.<\/p>\n
In reality, he had won 125 kroner ($12).<\/p>\n
On Monday, Sveen and the 47,000 others received apologies by text message from Norsk Tipping for the snafu.<\/p>\n
“The apology was a poor consolation. They should have sent it out after the mistake, not today,” he said.<\/p>\n
Norsk Tipping has been heavily criticised for the error — not only from devastated players like Sveen but also from the authorities.<\/p>\n
The Lottery Authority said Monday it had launched a review to determine if gambling laws had been broken, and Culture Minister Lubna Jaffery called the error “totally unacceptable”.<\/p>\n
The firm’s chief executive Tonje Sagstuen resigned on Saturday after the scandal, leaving acting chief executive Vegar Strand to apologise on Monday.<\/p>\n
Strand said his company’s state ownership made the mistake particularly problematic, noting that the firm was “entirely dependent on the trust of the population”.<\/p>\n
“We have deeply disappointed our customers and take full responsibility for rectifying the situation. Such errors are serious for a company that is supposed to manage the trust of Norwegians,” Strand said.<\/p>\n
“The work to rebuild trust again has the highest priority going forward.”<\/p>\n
po\/jxb<\/p>\n
\u00a9 Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Norwegian lottery company on Monday apologised to 47,000 crestfallen gamblers who were mistakenly told they had won huge sums in a lottery, the firm blaming a currency conversion error. State-owned gambling group Norsk Tipping said they had published incorrect prize amounts after a Eurojackpot draw on Friday because of an error converting from euro […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"subtitle":"","format":"standard","override":[{"template":"7","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"left-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"topbottom","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"1","show_post_related":"0","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"jnews_post_split":{"post_split":[{"template":"1","tag":"h2","numbering":"asc","mode":"normal","first":"0","enable_toc":"0","toc_type":"normal"}]},"footnotes":""},"categories":[198],"tags":[457,456,458],"class_list":["post-1530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-miscellaneous","tag-lottery","tag-norway","tag-offbeat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}