Man’s £145,000 William Hill win had to be repaid leaving him with heartbreaking broken promise to his sick mother
Just a week on from a woman being refused a more than £1 million jackpot she won on the William Hill app, revealing that she was offered £39 as compensation, more ‘winners’ have come forward about how the app told them they’d won only to pull a U-Turn.
Claire Ainsley, the previous jackpot winner who thought she had won £1,279,019.95, ended up being sent a ‘life changing’ amount of money from a sympathetic entrepreneur.
Where Ainsley was simply denied her payout however, a man has spoken out about how he was told he had won £145,000 and withdrew £10s of 1000s he is now being made to pay back.
Matt Cook appeared on Good Morning Britain this morning to discuss his own experience with a false ‘win’ on William Hill’s betting app.
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He revealed the £145,000 win was going to be a life changing amount, stating that he had told his mother who is fighting breast cancer he would be using the amount to pay off her mortgage.
Matt withdrew £33,000 of the £145,000 win before his account was locked, and he has stated that the betting company is now looking for him to repay the full amount he withdrew.
Speaking on the ITV morning show he said: “It's obviously quite a bad situation to be in. You think that you've won all this money.
“You can do a lot of things for a lot of people. It's not just about yourself anymore, it's the broken promises."
He admitted that he hadn’t brought himself to tell his mum just yet that he wouldn’t be able to pay for her mortgage as he’d hoped, stating he’d just wanted ‘to take a bit of ease off her life’.
He added: “You know, you promised other people, the mother of my children, I can help you do this now I can help you do that. Set college fees up for your children, do all these things and for them to turn round and say ‘no you can’t do these things, in fact you’re now in debt to us, you have to pay the money back’.”
Richard Madeley, interviewing Matt, pointed out that gambling winnings are non-taxable and so he would have gotten the full sum, calling it a ‘life-changing sum of money’.
Matt added that it had been ‘hard to get through the days’ as a result, and was joined on the show by another person effected by a similar situation.
Lee Oliver believed he had won £48,000 to be told by William Hill he actually hadn’t, but only after he had withdrawn a total of £18,000.
When he emailed William Hill about the money he was told two days later that he had just three days to send back the entire money he withdrew.
A statement from William Hill was read out on the show, saying: “During a routine review of platform activity, they identified an issue affecting the jackpot drop gain, which temporarily resulted in incorrect sums being credited to players' balances and withdrawals being processed incorrectly.
“They've contacted relevant customers to clarify the issue and are in the process of retrieving the funds in line with their standard terms and conditions."
Topics: Gambling, Good Morning Britain, ITV, TV, Money
Michael Slavin