Thousands of Norwegian residents became «millionaires» due to a mistake in the state lottery code — winnings were overstated by 10,000 times

Last week, a short-lived wave of euphoria swept across Norway as thousands of residents received notifications that they had become millionaires after winning the Eurojackpot lottery. It would seem that everything should have ended with the purchase of luxury cars and housing, but instead, the «winners» received significantly smaller amounts and an apology from the state lottery operator for an unfortunate mathematical error.

As noted by TechSpot, it turned out that the system of Norsk Tipping, which administers Eurojackpot in Norway, had a coding error when converting amounts from euro cents to Norwegian kroner — instead of dividing by 100, a multiplication sign was used, which increased the final winning amounts by 10,000 times.

Ole Fredrik Sven, 53, was also among the «lucky», who received a message about «winning» NOK 1.2 million while on vacation in Greece — the real amount, as it turned out, was 125 kroner. After a while, he suspected something was wrong and started checking news sites that set the record straight.

The error was discovered quickly enough and the next day, thousands of players received disappointing notifications with updated amounts. Overnight, Norsk Tipping removed the erroneous numbers from your website and application, noting that no payments had been made.

Ultimately, Sagstuen announced her resignation only a day after the incident went public — citing «breach of public trust» as her culpability. The company is now conducting a comprehensive review of its systems to prevent similar mistakes in the future.