A lottery player from Mönchengladbach, Germany, had his hopes raised for nothing last week when a German TV station broadcast the wrong numbers and caused to believe he'd snagged a big win when he had not.
When Franz Engelen, 58, tuned into ZDF on Wednesday, November 19, the onscreen numbers were a perfect match for the six numbers chosen by his lottery syndicate so he thought they'd won the jackpot. His share of the money would have been €950,000.
Unfortunately for Engelen, ZDF had broadcast the previous week's numbers by mistake so his celebrations were all for naught.
Speaking to the German tabloid Bild, Engelen said: "I was on the go; I looked quickly at the draw, wrote down the numbers and turned off the TV. When I compared the numbers with a lottery ticket and saw that six match I could not believe my luck."
Totally fooled by the televised numbers, Engelen and his wife never thought to contact the lottery to ask for confirmation. They began making plans instead and were even considering buying their daughter a condo.
Engelen learned the unfortunate truth the following morning when fellow syndicate member Tipper Reinhard Coenen, 52, told him they'd won not a cent.
"I knew that we had not won," Coenen said, recalling he had seen the numbers on teletext and they were not the same as those broadcast by ZDF.
"But Franz felt until the next morning that we were victorious. When he learned it from me, he was devastated," Coenen added.
