Lotto blunder quick, where's that sticky tape

Photo / Sarah Ivey

A Lotto blunder left thousands of hopeful punters thinking they had losing tickets after the wrong results were sent out.

As many as 30,000 MyLotto customers were sent the previous week's winning numbers after the Saturday night $18 million draw.

People who chose to buy their Lotto tickets online at MyLotto can opt to have an email sent to them with the night's results.

Part-way through the email distribution, the Lotteries Commission realised the mistake and stopped.

An email with the correct results was sent to affected customers before 9am yesterday.

Colin Wilson, from Howick, has been receiving the results by email for years and said he was disgusted with how the gaffe was dealt with.

"It's appalling how they've handled this. It's the national lottery and you would expect more."

He said the problem was that the heading of the second email was exactly the same as the incorrect one, meaning he almost deleted it, thinking the results had been sent twice.

"The very least I would have expected was a heading on the second email saying, 'Attention: incorrect results'."

He said he could have easily thrown out his tickets. "What if I'd won?"

Lotto spokeswoman Karen Jones apologised for the confusion.

"We apologise to our customers but unfortunately an error was made. At this stage it looks like human error."

She said while none of the customers who received the incorrect MyLotto email had won a large prize, there was no way of knowing whether any of them won smaller divisions.

Meanwhile, the giant $18 million jackpot was not won on Saturday, which means next week's draw is for $20 million - the second-largest Powerball jackpot if won by a single player. It is the 14th consecutive week Powerball has jackpotted.

Two tickets bought in New Lynn and on the North Shore won Lotto first division, each collecting $633,927.