Waiter ordered to split lottery win after legal dispute with his boss

The two warring men

A waiter has been ordered to split a £1m lottery scoop after a legal dispute with his boss.

The waiter had a dream that he would land a EuroMillions windfall, and his dream became reality when his ticket won him a cool £1million.

However, there was a slight spanner in the works.

Fatih Ozcan, who waited tables at the Kapadokya Turkish restaurant in York, thought his financial troubles were over when he bought the winning ticket. However, when his numbers came in, his boss, restaurant-owner, Hayati Kucukkoylu, claimed the money for himself instead.

The row between the two men resulted in threats and arrests – but now a judge has ruled the warring pair are entitled to £500,000 each – more than two and half years after they landed the prize.

Judge Mark Gosnell said Mr Ozcan “had a dream” he would win the EuroMillions on the night of January 29 2012:

“He dreamt that he was holding a large bundle of cash and, standing in front of him, was his boss.

“Mr Ozcan is a strong believer in the power of dreams and interpreted this to mean that he and Mr Kucukkoylu would win the lottery.”

The next day, Mr Ozcan “pestered” his boss for three hours before he finally agreed to enter the draw.

The waiter then went to a supermarket and bought the winning ticket.

However, once his 47-year-old boss heard the happy news, there were celebrations in the restaurant and he claimed to be the sole winner.

He insisted that the stake money was his – having come from the restaurants till – and that he alone had chosen the winning numbers.

In a panic, the waiter phoned Camelot and the police, falsely accusing his boss of stealing the winning ticket from his pocket.

Three days later Mr Kucukkoylu was arrested and held in police custody for nine hours.

When he returned from the police station, he discovered that Mr Ozcan had fled from his flat in the city.

The waiter admitted he had lied to the police and Camelot, but said his boss had threatened him and he was “fearful for his safety”.

This eventually resulted in a seven-day High Court Hearing in London. The judge ruled each was entitled to half, after looking at a series of angry texts between the two men, and CCTV footage of events in the restaurant as the winning slips were filled in.

The CCTV footage strongly suggested that both men had shared the task of choosing the winning numbers and that each had paid half of the £9 stake.