The Payment Manager Ms Ndileka Nobaxa of South Africa's National Lottery confirmed a few hours ago from the Cape Town office that the winner has come forward and has been paid R91 068 427 jackpot prize! According to Ms. Nobaxa "I have also spoken over the telephone with the winner and accompanying spouse, and offered the congratulations, support and best wishes of the National Lottery"
It is therefore confirmed that the winner is being given and will continue to be afforded requisite counseling and support. We will respect and abide by the wishes of the winner to remain anonymous. Nothing can be more life changing than winning R91 068 427 at the draw dedicated to the 91 year old global icon who, 20 years ago, led the founding mothers and fathers of the liberated South Africa from political imprisonment, banning orders, banishment, exile and other shackles of apartheid.
The winner has been generous enough to allow us to make her profile public.
It is therefore confirmed that a 43- year old wife and mother of two teenagers had tried her luck with PowerBall for the first time last Thursday for the draw on Friday which saw the jackpot grow to R91 million owing to consecutive rollovers.
While queuing to buy her R70 Quick Pick ticket, an unexplained sense of nervousness gripped her, causing her to allow the players behind her to buy their tickets first.
Little did she know that the unexplained edginess was a precursor to a windfall beyond her wildest dreams.
The winner, who hails from the Western Cape, did not want to take any chances. With the winning ticket safely secured in her husband’s wallet, the couple quietly booked themselves into a hotel in the city.
“We were very anxious after discovering that the winning PowerBall jackpot numbers matched the numbers on my ticket.
“All we wanted was to have the ticket validated so that we could get on with our lives,” said the winner.
Completely oblivious to all the media attention that the phony winner was getting, the couple said they had not told anyone about their fortune.
“We are not even going to tell our children about it,” they said.
The couple who run a medium-size business said they did not plan to change their lives in any drastic way.
They would buy themselves a new home, a car for their eldest child who will be going to university next year and put the bulk of the money in an interest-bearing account for a while.
A holiday trip, although not a priority, was also on the cards.
PowerBall had rolled over 22 times before Luvuyo Mandela, Dr Nelson Mandela’s great grandson, was invited by the National Lottery to do the 23rd draw since the start of that streak of rollovers that took us to the colossal jackpot. How could we not have foreseen that by inviting a Mandela to do the draw we were causing the unleashing of the famed Madiba magic? The legendary spell set that lucky PowerBall player free many million times over.
It was a players’ weekend. In addition to the mega millionaire 9 people won 342 748 each in the second division of PowerBall. Meanwhile LOTTO was won by 2 ticket holders each taking home R2 591 528 each. One second division LOTTO Plus winner scooped R688 911. In addition to that there were 356 441 other PowerBall winners collecting anything from R12 to R29 671 each, and 121 217 LOTTO and 89 259 LOTTO Plus winners getting paid prizes of between R33 and R8 558, and R10 50 and R7 347, respectively.
PowerBall has already produced four multimillionaires since it was introduced under 4 months ago – a R30 million winner from the inaugural Draw on 23 October 2009, a R12 million winner on 30 October, a R7 million winner on 10 November and a R6,9 million winner on 20 November. On the other hand collectively Lottery games including LOTTO have made 233 millionaires to the value of R796 million, and produced 77.8 million winners sharing R2.6 billion.
As it is done with the other National Lottery products, 34% of the proceeds of the PowerBall sales add to the R3.2 billion that we have contributed through the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund (NLDTF) since Gidani started operating the National Lottery. This resource is used to address the challenges of socio economic development and poverty alleviation in rural as well as urban areas of our country.
We welcome the focus of the Minister of Trade and Industry, the Hon Dr Rob Davis and the National Lotteries Board (NLB), our regulator, on the distribution side of the Lottery value chain. It is important for the credibility and critical for the stature of the National Lottery brand that all our stakeholders are well-served and satisfied.
The much publicized purported winner referred to as Mr Stanley Philander has not come and presented himself as a winner, neither has his wife, Diana. The information we obtained this morning is that the coupon supposed to be the Philanders’ winning ticket was actually bought on Saturday, 13 February 2010, the day following the PowerBall draw on the 12th. The numbers thereon are similar to those drawn the night before. In that case it would be valid for tonight’s PowerBall draw and can only be presented for validation thereafter.
We are concerned that claims have been made that the ticket was checked and found to be authentic before breaking the story. We emphasize that we only had one winner and that winner’s description does not go anywhere close to what has been communicated in those media that ran the story. We advise that all involved in the Philander story should do all they can to work with the Philander family to deal with implications of the apparent prank and their being paraded as the PowerBall super winners. We disapprove of the involvement of the children who also appeared in pictures with the parents in some of the media reports. Caution should be exercised as the recklessness that has surrounded the Philander hoax story can have far reaching consequences.
We endeavour at all times to operate the National Lottery with impeccable professional integrity and irreproachable ethics. We are strictly regulated.
Tonight’s PowerBall jackpot is guaranteed at R5 000 000.
The Basics of Winning Lotto/Lottery
Quote the source
ReplyDelete