Thousands of lottery players mistakenly told they had won big in $76 million jackpot

Many of us have dreamed of a lottery win but for thousands of lottery players that dream has now turned into something of a nightmare.

A few thousand players in Norway’s EuroJackpot thought they had scored big wins in last Friday’s $A76 million draw — only to have their elation quickly quashed.

The players were mistakenly sent messages saying they had won “high prizes” in the European-wide lottery, before later being told it was a coding error and the notifications were a mistake.

The messages were sent by Norsk Tipping, which is the company which handles player notifications for EuroJackpot in Norway.

It said it received prize amounts in euros then converted the figures into Norwegian kroner.

The “manual error” occurred in the conversion code. Instead of dividing the amounts by 100, as intended, the code multiplied the amounts by 100 — wrongly indicating “big wins” for the players involved.

“The error was discovered after a short time but the damage was done,” Norsk Tipping said, according to New York Times which also announced the departure of Norsk Tipping chief executive Tonje Sagstuen.

A remorseful Sagstuen said she had received messages from players who had started to plan vacations or buy a home.

“We understand of course that this is a breach of trust,” Sagstuen said.

Norsk Tipping did not share the exact number of impacted customers.

However, chairwoman Sylvia Brustad also admitted that trust had been broken.

“We are determined to clean up and improve ourselves,” she said.