Lotto Legal Battle Looms After Winning Ticket Mix-Up

The unluckiest lottery player in Ireland missed out on a €500,000 jackpot by handing back the winning ticket, and unwittingly sparked a legal wrangle.

The shop assistant at Tesco supermarket in Navan, Co. Meath mistakenly printed-out a €9 ticket but the customer wanted only a €4 ticket.

Now a legal battle is set to get underway over who owns the €9 ticket, which turned out to have the winning numbers for the Euromillions draw.

The cashier, 26-year-old Andrea O'Reilly, claims she planned to buy the ticket after making the mistake, but was prevented from doing so by her employers.

She is now suing Tesco.

For its part, Tesco says it will give away the money to a good cause if it turns out to be the legal owner of the ticket.

No-one knows who the customer was - it's possible the customer doesn't know themselves.

The strange story came to light when National Lottery headquarters contacted the Tesco store to tell them they had sold the winning ticket to the Euromillions draw.

Andrea O'Reilly says when she issued the customer with the correct ticket, she taped the other one to the side of her till.

She intended to sell it to another customer if they wanted a €9 ticket, but no-one did.

She says she drew a smiley face on it and planned to pay for it next morning.

She claims she was prevented by Tesco from doing so when she tried to buy it.

Speaking through her solicitor, she told the Irish Independent: "It's common practice than an employee has the option of purchasing a ticket that was issued to a customer.

"All I have to say at this stage is that I had the ticket and I now no longer have it."

Her legal case is likely to focus on the question of who owns the misprinted ticket, what the common practice in the shop was, and whether or not Ms O'Reilly claimed ownership of the ticket when she drew the smiley face on it, or if she never owned it because she never paid for it.

It will be unchartered legal territory when it goes before the courts.