Main points
- Norsk Tipping CEO Tonje Sagstuen has resigned following a mistake that resulted in more than 41,000 people receiving false messages about winning the Eurojackpot lottery.
- The error was caused by an incorrect conversion of winnings from euros to Norwegian kroner, where the amounts were multiplied by 100 instead of divided, which prompted a sharp reaction from the Norwegian Ministry of Culture.
Thousands of people in Norway received fake winnings in the state lottery / Photo Unsplash
In Norway, the CEO of state lottery company Norsk Tipping, Tonje Sagstuen, has resigned after a massive error that resulted in more than 41,000 citizens receiving false messages about winning the Eurojackpot lottery. The glitch inflated the winning amounts by 10,000 times.
Channel 24 reports, citing the Norwegian public broadcaster NRK.
How Norwegians were wrongly told they had won big
On Friday, June 27, thousands of Norwegians received messages about winning the Eurojackpot lottery, the amounts of which turned out to be 10,000 times larger than the real ones.
This happened because when converting winning amounts from euros to Norwegian kroner, instead of dividing by 100, they were multiplied by 100. In total, the error affected 41,147 Norwegians.
Following the incident, CEO Sagstuen announced her resignation, saying the situation was eroding trust.
As a manager, I was responsible for dealing with the mistakes that happened, and it was very gratifying to see how the close-knit Norsk Tipping team worked day and night to fix them,” she added.
The head of the Norwegian Ministry of Culture, to which Norsk Tipping is subordinate, Lubna Jaffi, reacted sharply to the situation, stressing that such mistakes are unacceptable.
“We take note of Tonje Sagstuen's resignation. As I have said, it is critical for Norsk Tipping to maintain people's trust. The entire monopoly model is based on this. The ministry will continue to monitor the work of the board, such mistakes must not happen, and we expect the board to actively work on improving supervision,” Jaffe said.
