A CORK couple got a four-figure sum from the National Lottery yesterday - without the benefit of a winning ticket.
A false rumour that they had won a £500,000 prize caused them so much hardship and embarrassment they sued the National Lottery and a Ballincollig supermarket and won an out-of-court settlement thought to be around £5,000.
The couple bought their ticket just minutes before the real winner, a woman whose identity has remained secret, picked the winning numbers. Not winning the Lottery they could live with, but when a rumour wrongly identified them as winners of the big prize, their lives became hell.
For Tony and Betty O'Callaghan, from Clash Road, Carrigrohane, Cork, a settlement reached in the Cork Circuit Court yesterday brought a nightmare to an end.
The couple sued Downes Supermarket, Ballincollig, Co Cork, and the National Lottery for £30,000 damages, but agreed to settle before the matter went to court.
Mr John Lucey BL told Judge A.G. Murphy that the case against Downes Supermarket was to be dismissed and an order was to be made to strike out proceedings against the National Lottery.
The O'Callaghans, in their legal documents, said they purchased the ticket for the midweek Lotto on a Wednesday at 10.58 a.m., just two minutes before an unknown woman, the real winner, picked the winning numbers.
Following the draw, their phone rang constantly with messages of congratulation. The couple went public to say they were not the winners, but to little effect. "Ever since we have been pestered," Mr O'Callaghan said.
A few people were disbelieving and had turned "nasty", he said, when he denied his wife had purchased the winning ticket. They were worried they would become a target for thieves and became so nervous he thought of bringing a shotgun to bed.
"It was a joke at first. I wonder what kind of misery do the people who win go through," Mr O'Callaghan told the local press.