When Tracy Ward won £300,000 on a lottery scratchcard, she thought years of scraping by on benefits were finally over.
For years, the mother had been facing financial difficulties while bringing up her five children in a council house in Wood Green, North London. She often found it challenging to make ends meet, struggling to afford even basic necessities like groceries.
Everything changed one Wednesday in 2013 when she decided to treat her kids to a meal at a chicken shop. To her surprise, she discovered that the lottery ticket she bought was a winner, with a prize amounting to six figures.
Shocked by her newfound luck, Mrs. Ward decided to take her family on a vacation to California Cliffs Holiday Park in Yarmouth. She also generously shared a portion of her winnings with each of her children and informed the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) that she no longer required financial assistance.
She claims she was then ‘hounded’ by a salesman at the park to ‘invest’ in caravans – ultimately purchasing six in a matter of months under the belief she would make a profit.
Mrs Ward claims she was promised she could rent her caravans out for a lucrative sum – only to be hit by rising site fees, bills and maintenance costs.
Having spent around £150,000 on purchasing the caravans alone, the mother was allegedly forced to sell up when no money came in – losing the majority of her lottery winnings and frantically accepting just £41,000 for the lot.
Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, Mrs Ward revealed that a decade later she is struggling again, on anti-depressants and finds it hard to look her family in the eye.
‘I couldn’t even face myself let alone anyone else,’ she said.
‘It depresses me. I’m really depressed. I’m on antidepressants and stuff like that. I still can’t look certain people in the face you know.
Tracy Ward (pictured) won £300,000 on a lottery scratchcard in 2013 – only to lose the majority of it less than a year later after investing in caravans
‘It was money to set me and my family up for life.
‘When I see my family struggling now, I lost my dad last year, and I see my mum by herself; I could have bought her a little place to live near me. I can’t do any of that now. I feel so ashamed.’
Mrs Ward, now 55 and with six grandchildren, claimed it all started when she told the salesman she had recently come into money via a lottery scratchcard.
Having spent years ‘scraping by’, the mother was ‘naive’ and ‘excited’, she said, looking forward to a fresh start with plans to buy her own house.
‘[Then] we went to California Cliffs and when we walked past we saw in the window that you can buy caravans, so we said it might be a good thing if we bought a reasonable caravan, so the family could always have a holiday whenever they wanted,’ she said.
‘We were in the office and [a salesman] said, ‘can I ask you how you can afford this?’
‘Me being stupid I told him about the lottery win.
‘I’d never had this money before, I was excited.
‘He hounded us. He literally hounded and hounded us everyday.
‘Then he sits us down and tells us that we can make money from this, that we can make our money back.
‘We’re thinking this might be a good business opportunity, because we don’t know anything about it.
‘All in all we bought six [caravans].’
Mrs Ward’s sons taking their niece for a ride at the caravan park in Yarmouth during a family holiday
Mrs Ward claimed the salesman continued to show her and her husband new caravans to invest in.
‘We were eating our breakfast one morning and he’s banging on the caravan, ‘have you been to the bank yet?’ and I was like ‘no we’ve not been up’.
‘He goes ‘what time’, I said ‘oh probably about 12, 1pm’.
‘Then he’s calling us when we’re in the bank.’
Mrs Ward alleged that after ground rates and bills continued to rise, her and her husband could no longer afford the upkeep and were forced to sell their caravans ‘for scrap’.
‘We were left feeling hounded and robbed,’ she said, adding that she ended up accepting £41,000 to end the nightmare.
‘We couldn’t even look our family in the face because we’d lost that money. We just hibernated for years,’ she said.
‘We moved out of London, we’ve moved to Kent.
‘It was horrendous. Really shameful.’
Mrs Ward still looks back fondly on the day she won the lottery, but struggles with the trauma of what has happened since.
‘I had just picked my kids up from school, and I went in and got the ticket – a bingo ticket it was,’ she said.
‘I scratched it off, it had the four corners, which was £300,000, and I was actually waiting in the chicken shop because I was going to buy my kids chicken and chips to treat them. We didn’t really get many treats back then.
‘I gave it to the man behind the counter and I said ‘check that for me’, and he looked and he goes ‘yeah!’ I said ‘no’, I said ‘you’re lying’.
‘He gave me the chicken and chips and I ran. I don’t know how I ran because I’ve got really bad knees, but I somehow ran back home and I quickly went in.
‘My husband was ill that day so he was in bed, and I ran in and I shoved it under his nose, and I said ‘how much is this, how much is this?’
‘I phoned my mum and I said ‘mum, how much is this?’
‘I said ‘what can I buy with that?’ And she goes to me ‘Tracy, you can buy anything’. I will never forget that feeling, because I thought oh my family, we’re sorted.
‘No more benefits, no more nothing. We’ve always been scraping together for shopping or I’ve had to put things back and things like that.
‘Ten days later, the cheque was cleared in the account, so we booked a holiday in Yarmouth, California Cliffs.
‘Before I did anything, I made sure the family had money in their accounts. I didn’t want them to want for nothing.’
A spokesperson from California Hills Holiday Park, said: ‘Parkdean Resorts has a strong community of over 18,000 loyal holiday homeowners, many of whom have been with us for decades. We have a thorough sales process and carefully train our people to provide prospective owners with all the information they need on holiday home ownership and financing so they can make an informed decision. Details on what to expect from owning a holiday home, as well as the costs associated, can be found on our website too.
‘Ms Ward was an owner at the Park during 2013-14. At the time of purchase, the charges she would need to pay, as well as the annual review of these and any increases, were explained to her. These charges were also clearly set out in the written agreements which Ms Ward signed each time she bought a caravan at the Park. Ms Ward left the Park over ten years ago and we have no record of her raising any concerns with us during or since then.’
