Robert Clemett claimed NSW Lotteries owed him over $3.3 million from a drawing held nearly two decades ago, but failed to convince Justice Lucy McCallum.
Clemett's fight with the lottery began in 2001 when the Nine Network aired a story about unclaimed lottery prizes and mentioned an unclaimed prize from the Oz Lotto drawing held on September 23, 1997. The $10 million jackpot was shared by three ticket-holders, but only two of the winners had stepped forward to claim their prize.
According to the show the missing winner purchased their ticket from Greenfield Newsagents in the shopping centre on Greenfield Road. After the show had aired around 50 people contacted NSW Lotteries claiming to be the missing winner, but Clemett is the only one who was willing to take the lottery to the NSW Supreme Court to get his hands on the $3,348,326.14 prize.
Clemett said he paid $61.75 for his ticket that contained the winning numbers 10, 24, 28, 34, 37 and 45, but claimed he'd later lost it. He provided details of the date and time he purchased the ticket, the number of games he played, and the type of ticket he purchased.
When a court-appointed investigator discovered the details failed to match those of the winning ticket Clemett tried to explain the discrepancies by saying the newsagent must have changed his entry, but Justice McCallum dismissed the idea at once and said Clemett may genuinely believe himself to be the missing winner, but she was not satisfied this was so.
"In my assessment, his fixation on that as an immutable fact has prompted him over the years to bend all of the surrounding evidence to meet it," she said.
