A grandmother who thought her life had changed after she became a EuroMillions winner for only 10 minutes is now back to living in a mouldy flat.
After belatedly checking her lottery tickets, Margaret De Micheli, 72, thought she had won the staggering €40 million jackpot.
After purchasing a EuroMillions ticket for the March 29 draw, she went to the Post Office to check her results and was given a slip by the shopkeeper to confirm she had won the mega jackpot.
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However, she was given some heartbreaking news after being advised to check the numbers one more time at a nearby Tesco in Swiss Cottage, north London.
The woman did not have the winning numbers, and after contacting the National Lottery, they confirmed her hopes of retirement for her 78-year-old husband had been crushed.
Since then, her husband, who she has been married to for 54 years, remains unable to retire due to the service charges they're required to pay on their home.
Her husband has to get to work at 5.15am as he's a traffic warden and doesn't finish until 4.45pm, and life since the heart-breaking false dawn has meant they are still forced live in a mouldy flat.
She said the high of believing they had won the jackpot to then being told they were returning to their damp and mouldy London flat was particularly crushing.
She told The Sun : "We're back to normal. My husband is back at work, I wanted to win something so he could afford to retire.
"We'd like to be able to move out of the flat. It's due for refurbishment this year. They're putting new windows.
"It's very, very hard. We would like to move out of the flat to somewhere by the seaside. I've managed to brush all the mould off the windows now."
She confirmed she would like to move to Dorset as they would like to live near the seaside and hoped the money would mean her husband would be able to retire.
However, the grandmother has still not given up hope of the winning the jackpot as she does Set For Life, the normal Lotto and the EuroMillions.
And despite not winning the €40 million jackpot, she would be happy with €25k or a similar amount so her husband could retire and they could live comfortably.
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