The distractions of the holiday season simply cannot come fast enough for UK National Lottery operator Camelot.

Last Friday, the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) announced that it had levied a £3m fine on Camelot for breaching the terms of its operating license. Specifically, the fine stemmed from Camelot having paid out £2.5m to an apparently fraudulent jackpot claim in 2009.

Camelot CEO Andy Duncan revealed that the lottery operator received a claim in 2009 for the £2.5m National Lottery prize under Camelot’s “damaged ticket prize process.” Duncan said Camelot made what at the time seemed “a reasonable decision to take based on the evidence available,” but later realized that the ticket in question had been “deliberately damaged.”

The incident resurfaced last year after Camelot received “new information that cast some doubt on that original decision.” The UKGC investigation ultimately concluded that while “it could not be certain that a fraud had taken place, it was more likely than not that a fraudulent prize claim had been made and paid out.”