Lawsuit filed against man who refused to divide Mark Six prize

14 Food and Environmental Hygiene Department officers filed a lawsuit against a fellow health inspector in the High Court after the latter refused to divide a 33 million dollar Mark Six lottery jackpot which was won after the group pooled their money to purchase a syndicate ticket.

This as the legal action was taken in a bid to recover 29 million dollars.

The FEHD officer surnamed Ling who was accused of refusing to divide the lottery jackpot had previously spoken to the press during a criminal damage case at a wet market.

Among the 14 individuals filing the lawsuit are Ling's colleagues in his department as well as his superior Senior Superintendent Pau Chung-on.

The lawsuit indicated that Pau suggested to his colleagues in April to pool their money to purchase a syndicate ticket for the Mark Six lottery.

The senior superintendent said members of the group may pick their own number, agreeing that the reward would be divided among them in accordance to the amount of money that was contributed.

As of September, two of the group's members were transferred to another department while three new members joined, constituting the 15 people involved in the case.

They paid a total of 1,650 dollars for the syndicate ticket for September 5th's Mark Six lottery, with members contributing between 20 to 300 dollars.

Ling himself contributed 210 dollars.

The defendant used the money to buy two syndicate tickets, with half placed in a "3-banker-and-11-leg-number" entry and the other half in a "3-banker-and-10-leg-number" entry.

According to the Writ of Summons, Ling then took a photo of the entries and sent them to his group via WhatsApp.

The FEHD group managed to win a lottery jackpot amounting to 33.1 million dollars, with 4.2 million going to the defendant in accordance with the earlier agreement.

However, Ling deleted the screenshots of the entries on the night the Mark Six results were announced.

The defendant told his colleagues two days later that the group is unaware of what numbers were chosen when he purchased the tickets, adding that he did not need to split the jackpot.

The Writ further stated that his fellow FEHD colleagues subsequently demanded him to show them the winning numbers, to which he refused.

Ling was earlier arrested by the police on suspicion of theft.