Man Wrongly Told He Won Nearly $130,000, but Then Lottery Company Said They Made a Mistake: ‘Crushing Disappointment’

Ole Fredrik Sveen of Kløfta, Norway, has always fantasized about hitting it big. He’d buy a lottery ticket every few weeks, usually walking away with nothing—or at most a small win.

Then, while on holiday in Greece with his girlfriend this past summer, it finally seemed like his moment had arrived.

“In June, I was on holiday in Greece with my girlfriend. We’d had the most amazing day and were watching the sunset with a glass of wine. Earlier in the day, we had discussed buying a holiday home there. ‘I’d need to win the lottery first!’ I joked,” he told The Guardian.

Not long after, his phone buzzed with a text from Norsk Tipping, Norway’s lottery operator. The message said he’d won the Eurojackpot.

“My hands were starting to shake as I logged into the app and saw a notification saying I had won $128,360,” Sveen recalled.

For a moment, the future looked wide open. He said his heart raced, his mind spun with possibilities—and he even called his mother to share the news.

But the excitement didn’t last.

Something felt off, he said, so he checked the winning numbers against his own.

“I checked the winning numbers and compared them with mine. I’d only matched two main numbers and one bonus number. My heart dropped to the pit of my stomach. There was no way I could have won so much money,” he explained.

By then, he said, reports about a major mistake were already circulating online. Thousands of people had reportedly been told they’d won huge sums—incorrectly.

“It was a crushing disappointment,” Sveen said. “The holidays, the plans I’d made in my head all disappeared. I had to call my mom and tell her I hadn’t actually won any money. My girlfriend broke down in tears.”

“The rest of the evening felt very subdued,” he added. “We were both drained. You can’t miss what you never had, but we felt so angry they could get people’s hopes up like that. The next day, I was even more annoyed that nobody from Norsk Tipping had been in touch to confirm we hadn’t won and apologize. It was two or three days before we were able to stop thinking about what could have been. It took the shine off what had been a wonderful holiday.”

Sveen said he didn’t receive formal confirmation from Norsk Tipping about the error until several days later—something he described as reopening the wound.

“I’m glad I had my wits about me and realized quite quickly there was an error, because if I thought I’d won for a whole weekend, I might have already spent a lot of money,” he said, adding that “getting the confirmation in writing felt like the first blow all over again.”

Since then, Sveen said he’s stopped playing the lottery altogether because the experience left it feeling “tainted,” though he’s trying to keep his focus on the good things in his life.

Norsk Tipping apologized for the error in a statement posted to its website on June 27, attributing the issue to a “manual error” that caused prize amounts to be multiplied by 100 rather than divided by 100.

“Norsk Tipping sincerely apologizes to everyone who was notified of an incorrect prize amount,” the statement said.