Lotto Millionaires club winners reach over 1,500

MANILA, Philippines – The Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) announced yesterday that the so-called Lotto Millionaires club – winners of lotto jackpots – has now reached more than 1,500 lucky players since the online lottery game was launched in 1995.

PCSO spokesman Larry Cedro told reporters during the weekly Friday Balitaan sa Hotel Rembrandt in Quezon City that the newest members of the club are a computer programmer from Abucay, Bataan and a medical secretary from Cebu City, who shared the P182-million jackpot of the 6/49 Super Lotto game early this month.

He said of the total number of winners, 17 have won more than P100 million in jackpot prizes from the 6/42, Mega Lotto 6/45, and the 6/49 SuperLotto games.

“A majority of the winners are poor and ordinary employees,” Cedro said.

PCSO officially launched on Monday its latest game, the Power Lotto, considered the most exiting online lottery game in the country with an initial P50-million jackpot for a P50 bet.

The new game, which is patterned after Power Lotto games played in at least 18 countries, is now available in lotto outlets across the country.

Cedro said the agency introduced the Power Lotto to attract affluent Filipinos to “spread the charity virus” by patronizing lottery games that are meant to generate funds for the poor.

“Power Lotto is a way of encouraging affluent sectors of our society, the ABC class, to join the charity bandwagon. They can now help our less fortunate countrymen and at the same time look forward to winning millions of pesos through the lottery games,” he said.

Cedro said they expect the new game to generate an additional P149 million in charity funds during the first six months of operation.

The Power Lotto game is a combination of the regular lotto games and digit games where the player selects five-combinations from one to 55 and from another set of numbers from 1 to 10.

A player who will hit the five  plus one combination will win the minimum P50-million jackpot. Other winning combinations ranging from P100 to P700,000 also await lucky players.

A player who gets the first five set but misses the second single number set gets P700,000; 4 plus 1, P50,000; four plus zero, P8,000; three plus one, P4,000; two plus one, P400 and one plus one, P100.