QC bettor becomes 1st lotto winner in 2016, bags P50M jackpot

MANILA, Philippines — Just three days into the new year and a Quezon City lotto player has already become the country’s newest multimillionaire, after the bettor won the Ultra Lotto 6/58 jackpot prize of P50 million.

The winner, who bought the winning ticket from a lotto outlet along Commonwealth Avenue, was the sole player to guess the winning number combination 26-10-05-24-49-12 in the game’s Jan. 3 draw. The Ultra Lotto has a minimum guaranteed jackpot prize of P50 million.

Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) Vice Chair and General Manager Jose Ferdinand Rojas II said that the lotto player availed himself of the agency’s System 8.  The bettor randomly picks 28 combinations, for P560 to win the jackpot prize. He added that the Quezon City bettor’s win came 17 draws after another lotto player from Bukidnon won on Oct. 30, 2015, the Ultra Lotto’s biggest prize so far of close to P278 million.

Rojas reminded the winners anew that they should claim their prize within a year or the prize money would revert to the PCSO’s charity fund.

Sunday’s Ultra Lotto draw also produced 29 second-prize winners who each won P23,770 and more than 900 third-prize players who each took home P570.  SFM