How the luck of the Irish came through for this demolition syndicate
A syndicate from a demolition company in Northern Ireland have struck lucky with a £250Thousand EuroMillions win. On hearing the exciting news the 18-strong group exploded with joy, but it would never have come to be if it weren’t for their usual routine being disrupted.
Michelle O’Hare always buys the group’s tickets from her local shop. But this time she was away at a wedding so she passed on the responsibility to another syndicate member, Gareth Tinnelly. He picked them up from a different store and left the tickets on his desk for a whole week before Michelle checked them at her local shop, where she was told one was too big to pay out.
Once she checked The National Lottery app to see how much they’d won, and rang Camelot to claim the win, she decided to have a bit of fun with the others. With the help of Gareth, she hatched a sneaky plan for the Monday morning back at work.
“We told everyone that we’d forgotten to buy the lottery tickets over the weekend but had done a bet on Saturday’s Grand National instead,” Michelle said. “Then we gave everyone an envelope and explained that the person whose envelope contained the name of the winning horse would win £500. In reality, I had placed a note in every envelope to say they had won £14,000.”
When everyone began opening their envelopes they soon realised what had happened and it wasn’t long before everyone was jumping around, hugging each other and cheering. And to top it off, the boss let them leave work early to go to the pub for the afternoon to celebrate.
Michelle always had an inkling they’d get lucky. “I don’t know why but I always had a feeling that we’d win big,” she said.
“In fact, I said to my colleagues that I would pay them big money someday. Now it’s just amazing that I can say I told you so!”
1st May 2019
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