I found this old news interesting. this is a story about a lotto bettor who said he has the lotto winning ticket but was told it was fake.
Thanks to Iloilo views
Author: powwow Posted on February 25th, 2009
I asked those questions in the light of the experience of a supposedly jackpot winner. Though vaguely, our readers will remember the published case of that man – Calito L. Mirando Jr. of Caragsacan, Dingsalan, Aurora – whose winning ticket was dishonored for being “fake.” It deserves an update, lest it would be completely forgotten.
The case first hugged public attention on April 22, 1999 when an investigative reporter, Janet Rebusio Ducayag, wrote very belatedly in the tabloid People’s Tonight a news feature on Mirando having been deprived of the lotto prize of P120,163,123, drawn way back on the night of March 9, 1996.
Ducayag wrote that, early that day, Mirando, a lumber salesman, went to a lotto ticket outlet at ACT theater in Cubao, Quezon City and bought a ticket – then costing ten pesos – betting on the combination 15-22-23-24-34-36.
The following day, he read the newspaper that his ticket had won. He walked back to the ACT lotto outlet and showed his winning ticket to the lady teller, who immediately inserted the ticket to the computerized machine verifier. The computer screen flashed the words, “Congratulations for winning the jackpot prize!”
On March 18, 1996, Mirando – clad in t-shirt, short pants and slippers, hence looking every inch like a tramp – showed up at the PCSO office on San Marcelino St., Manila. No less than then PCSO Chairman Manuel Morato met him at the reception room and got hold of his ticket. Morato excused himself to go to his office. An hour passed before he re-emerged. He returned the ticket, telling Mirando that it’s a counterfeit, and that somebody else, a driver from Lipa City, had bagged the jackpot.
To appease him, a PCSO legal counsel, Atty. Romualdo Quiñones, advised him to stop arguing with the chairman and go to court instead.
Before going to court, Mirando sought the help of Department of Justice (DOJ) State Prosecutor Teresita Domingo and Judge Luisito Cortez of the Municipal Trial Court of Plaridel, Bulacan. They arranged for Mirando to meet with Morato at Sulo Restaurant, Quezon City, with the end view of settling the problem out of court. But Morato did not show up.
Consequently, with the financial support of sympathetic lumber dealers, Mirando filed a case for damages and for payment of P120-million prize against PCSO and chairman Morato on September 1, 2000 before Judge Thelma Ponferrada of the Regional Trial Court Branch 215, Quezon City.
One of the witnesses for the plaintiff, Edwin Alibuyog of the Philippine Gaming Management Corporation (the exclusive supplier of lotto ticket-dispensing computers, including the one assigned to ACT outlet), vouched for the authenticity of Mirando’s ticket.
Surprisingly, when the court sought the ACT outlet teller for her testimony, she was no longer at her post. In fact, the outlet itself had suddenly moved out without prior notice.
Nevertheless, Alibuyog debunked the assertion of Morato that somebody other than Mirando had won the P120-million, March 9, 1996 jackpot. Morato’s purported winner, a jeepney driver from Lipa City, could not have won because the outlet from where he had allegedly bought his ticket, Zenco Sales on Libertad St., Pasay City, started operating only on April 28, 1996 – more than six weeks after the March 9 draw.
While this case was pending in court, Carlito Mirando Jr. had to move from a friend’s house to another’s due to threats to his life. There was a time when, at the business address of a lumber dealer in Cabanatuan City, a group of armed men came looking for him.
The reporter of People’s Tonight who first exposed the Mirando misfortune, Janet Ducayag, testified that Morato had warned him not to testify for Mirando. But she did, saying that unidentified men had strafed her car while parking on Del Pan, Port Area, Manila. Fortunately, she was not inside.
This writer has also repeatedly questioned the credibility of lotto draws. In this corner last month, I echoed the opinion of Pangasinan Archbishop Oscar Cruz that there must be some hidden political agenda behind the massive promotion of lotto – aimed at luring the gullible to bet their bottom peso – in the light of renewed calls for charter change, which could open opportunity for the President to extend her term beyond 2010. Cruz is among the political analysts who believe that PCSO and PAGCOR money have been “effective” in the House as far as frustrating efforts to impeach GMA is concerned.
In response, a reader e-mailed me what I had not yet known: that Mirando had lost his case; it was dismissed by the RTC on April 27, 2005, sustaining Morato’s claim that Mirando’s ticket was fake.
On March 30, 2006, Carlito L. Mirando, Jr. appealed before the Court of Appeals, docketed as CA-GR CY No. 86399, assigning errors to the RTC’s decision.
Mirando, now 60 years old, still clings to the hope that, eventually, the Court of Appeals would reverse the lower court’s decision.
