This is the moment a pair of lottery fraudsters thought they'd won £4 million ($5.29 million) on a scratchcard. Watch the CCTV footage here:
Mark Goodram and John Watson - both from Bolton - were in Clapham, London, on Easter Monday 2019 when they used details from a debit card belonging to a man called Joshua Addiman - who they didn't know - to buy five scratchcards at a Waitrose store.
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The men then went to a Londis on Clapham High Street where they proceeded to scratch the cards and found they had at first won £10 on one card and then £4 million on the second.
The pair then celebrated by going on a four-day bender, posting their escapades across social media.
However, suspicions soon arose when 38-year-old Goodram said he couldn’t receive the winnings via bank transfer as he didn’t have a bank account - despite buying the scratchcard with a debit card.
Camelot - which operates the National Lottery - then referred the case to police, who had dealt with the pair before, as Goodram already had 24 convictions, while 34-year-old Watson had 74 convictions.
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After initially insisting they'd won the money 'fair and square' using a friend's card, Goodram and Watson changed their plea at the last minute to guilty to three counts of fraud by false representation.
On Tuesday (14 December), the pair were both sentenced to 18 months in jail.
During sentencing, Recorder Sarah Johnston said: "You must have thought all your Christmases had come at once.
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"Camelot were instinctively and instantly suspicious of the tale that you told.
"You had the audacity to plead your sense of injustice in the national newspapers, subsequent to the fraud being uncovered.
"The intended loss was not of Camelot. It wasn't to Mr Addiman. The loss was to the next rightful, law-abiding customer who was to go into that Waitrose store in Clapham and purchase that scratch card.
"For that unidentifiable individual, fate has twisted at the last minute and deprived them of a life-changing sum of money."
She continued: "This type of offending is serious. It is rooted in greed and a total lack of respect for the property of others.
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"You both have appalling records for dishonesty and theft.
"I have no doubt that both of you will continue to offend in dishonest ways in the future."
Detective Constable Michelle Wilkinson said: "This was quite an extraordinary case as Goodram and Watson's chances of claiming this scratchcard were one in four million; but unfortunately for them, they had knowingly bought this ticket through fraudulent means.
"While the massive winnings were never put in the wrong hands and no one came to any harm, there is no doubt in my mind that these men would have gladly accepted this money without any remorse for their illicit ways of obtaining it.
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"The vigilance of staff at Camelot has to be commended, and the subsequent investigation by our team at the Complex Fraud Team has ensured that these two men are rightly behind bars and can learn to accept how their selfish and unscrupulous actions were far from acceptable."
Featured Image Credit: Greater Manchester PoliceTopics: UK News, Crime, National Lottery