CNN
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Norwegian National Lottery apologised after thousands of players were falsely told they had won a huge sum in a draw in the Eurojackpot due to coding errors.
Norsk Tipping receives a prize from Germany in the Euro and hides it from Norwegian Croner. However, an error occurred during conversion, multiplying the prize money by 100 rather than subtracting it by 100, the company said Friday.
Norsk Tipping sent a message and sent a notification to customers who showed the wrong inflated prize money before issuing an amendment later.
“Norsk Tipping will sincerely apologize to everyone who has been notified of the false prize,” it said.
The company blamed the issue for “manual coding errors.”
“The customer has not been paid the wrong prize,” he added.
In another statement on Saturday, Norsk Tipping CEO Tonje Sagstuen also apologized for the error.
“We are very sorry that we have disappointed so many people. We understand that people are pissed off with us,” Sagstuen said in a statement.
“I’ve received a lot of messages from people who have planned public holidays, bought apartments and renovated the money before they realised that the amount was wrong,” she said.
“I can tell them, sorry! But I understand that it’s a small comfort,” added Sagstsun.
The company then sent another apology message signed by Strand.
“On a Friday evening, thousands of Norwegians were mistakenly told they had won a massive award at the Eurojackpot. This was an error that had a lot of impact and we took very seriously,” he read.
“We deeply regret what happened. On behalf of us in the Norsk transformation, we would like to apologise to everyone affected by this,” Strand said.
The Eurojackpot reached a Norwegian croner of 377 million ($37.3 million), with the next draw scheduled to take place on Tuesday, as all numbers did not match correctly.
