Edwina and David Nylan from Fleetwood joyed turned to despair when they couldn’t claim their winningsJulia Banim Audience Writer, Jane Lavender and Steve Bagnall Breaking News editor
10:33, 29 Jan 2026
The couple though they’d won £35m, but there was a devastating twist(Image: ITV)
A couple who believed they’d scooped an astonishing £35 million lottery prize, ended up winning nothing. Edwina and David Nylan, who participated in the draw on December 23 2015, could scarcely have imagined that six of their chosen numbers would match those displayed on the Lottomobile app.
In what initially appeared to be a festive windfall, the financially struggling Nylans found that all six of their numbers – 01 – 02 – 04 – 19 – 28 – 41 – had come up, seemingly securing them an extraordinary £35,410,034.
Yet their dreams came crashing down when they tried to collect their winnings – entirely because of insufficient funds in their account. Grandmother Edwina, from Fleetwood, Lancashire, explained: “When the numbers came up, it looked like we had got all six and had won the jackpot but when I checked, there was nothing from Camelot.
“I rang customer services at Camelot and the person I spoke to said they could see from their records that we had intended to buy those numbers but they said the purchase did not go through because we only had 60p in our account.
“We had tried to top up the account and hadn’t realised that hadn’t registered either. You get an email to confirm your purchase, but I didn’t remember to check because it was just before Christmas and I was so busy,” reports the Mirror.
Edwina, who tried her best to stay positive, expressed her disappointment: “I am gutted, but what can we do? We have played for years, and had our online account for some time, so it is not as if we didn’t know what we were doing.
“I have just had to carry on with things and not get too down. Shocked isn’t the word, but as a family we stick together and just have to be grateful for what we’ve got.”
Despite their devastating setback, the couple revealed they would continue playing the Lottery, hoping for better luck in the future. Sign up for the North Wales Live newsletter sent twice daily to your inbox
A Camelot spokesperson said: “The player did attempt to purchase an online Lotto ticket multiple times on December 23 from 7pm onwards (the cut-off to buy tickets is 7.30pm), however, there were insufficient funds in the player’s account – so the attempted purchases were not successful.
“The player would have received an error message on every occasion confirming this. We do not have any record of the player attempting to add funds to their account, nor would anyone from our customer services team have any visibility of the numbers that the player attempted to purchase because that level of detail wouldn’t be shown on the screen in front of them.
“When anyone successfully purchases a ticket on the Lottery website they will see a purchase confirmation screen, receive an email confirming their purchase and be able to see the ticket in their National Lottery online account.”
They added: “Only tickets that have been successfully purchased can be entered into the draw. So it is up to players to ensure that they have adequate funds in their account to complete a ticket purchase.”
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