Would you share a win of $1.5 million with ten other people? Well. a lottery syndicate coordinator, Trent Bowden,  made the decision not to distribute his winnings to the other participants in the group. The disgruntled ten are now suing its coordinator for allegedly failing to share the lottery winnings when he won the jackpot. The group has also served LotteryWest with a lawsuit.

Syndicates Abuse Of Trust? 

Up until that point, everything with the West Australian Lottery Syndicate seemed fine, then in November, something unexpected happened. The group says that Bowden used the syndicate’s regular numbers to purchase the winning tickets. The numbers were 12, 6, 3, 18, 35, and 31. 

Bowden allegedly first used the numbers to buy a ticket for the Saturday Lotto draw on October 29 and won AUD $2,200. He then took those winnings to buy more tickets in the Oz Lotto draw on November 1 and won another AUD$2,802. He then re-invested the funds further to buy tickets for the Saturday Lotto draw on November 12 and hit the jackpot to win $1.5 million. Bowden went to collect the prize for himself and refused to share the winnings with the other members of his group.

Taken To Court

The other ten members of the group are not taking this lying down.  Instead, they have already brought legal action against Bowden and LotteryWest, the organization in charge of Western Australia’s lottery. Due to LotteryWest’s inability to identify or, in this case, reject lottery winners, they have included it in the lawsuit. This last week, a writ was filed in Western Australia’s Supreme Court on behalf of the rest of the ten lottery syndicate members, accusing Lotterywest as well as the Perth man of wrongdoing.

According to West Australian Lottery Syndicate, there was a “mutual assumption” that any winnings from a ticket bought by the defendant on behalf of the syndicate “would be shared by all the group participants.

Legal Stuff and Pushing the Limits

The syndicate’s legal attorney, Cally Hannah, stated that she was seeking an acceptable settlement for her ten clients who were allegedly left out of the wins.  Mr. Bowden disagrees with the writ’s assertions and his attorney, Kathleen McNally, stated that her client plans to fight the lawsuit. The likelihood of the case reaching a courtroom is slim because the financial loss would be too large. However, arbitration in situations like these has previously been used in the past, so a settlement will probably be achieved.

Other Such Cases

Australian syndicate lottery winners have appeared in court before; this is not the first instance. A couple running a successful lottery syndicate and a man vying for a piece of the AUD $63 million Powerball jackpot are embroiled in a court dispute. The syndicate’s leaders, Tania and Kevin Parkes, with 248 players, learned on February 24 that they had each won AUD$250,000, half of the overall Powerball jackpot. Everyone in the syndicate was required to show identification as evidence of their ticket in order to get their winnings.

But Mark Ing wanted to collect his AUD$250,000 and insisted he had a ticket. The Parkes, who operated numerous syndicates for various Lotto prize pools, claimed that because he had bought a ticket in another syndicate, he was not eligible to receive the money. In an effort to stop Mr. Ing from claiming a portion of the money, the couple is currently battling him in court. He is also represented by Cally Hannah.

Conclusion

At the moment there is no more information on Trent’s attempt to not share the money. Trent’s efforts have drawn praise from some, but criticism from others for violating the deal. The other syndicate members can only hope that the court will rule in their favor because what are the odds that their numbers will appear twice in the lottery? Whatever the outcome, we can be certain that more cases of this kind will occur since disagreements over money, especially these big amounts, are inevitable.