Seeking to determine the legitimacy of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) lotto jackpot winners, Sen. Raffy Tulfo raised several theories that cast doubts in the lottery system which he said stemmed from the prize augmentation employed by the agency.

During the continuation of the Senate hearing of the Committee on Ways and Means on Thursday, Jan. 25, Tulfo mentioned a scenario wherein machines in an undisclosed location can be employed to generate bets in a matter of hours to cover 14 million combinations.

In relation to this, Tulfo pointed out that increasing the jackpot prize from the prize fund reserve raised doubts among the bettors.

"That is the reason why nagkaroon ng duda yung pagdadagdag. Kaya nga I'm here to tell you I will stop that practice ninyo na mag-augment ng sa jackpot," he said.

In can be recalled in the previous hearing that PCSO General Manager Melquiades Robles admitted that last December, the PCSO increased the jackpot money of all lotto games. PCSO added 100 million each on 6/42 and 6/45 while half a billion each on 6/49, 6/55, and 6/58 from their prize fund reserve.

Asked why they did it, Robles said it was part of the PCSO marketing campaign to encourage more bettors and to boost revenue for charity.

Robles explained betting on all possible combinations is the right of anybody and that it doesn't guarantee anything. He added that it also does not guarantee that the bettor will be the sole winner of the jackpot prize since there can be two or three of them.

He also mentioned that their records show that not all combinations were betted on.

Next, he also stated how someone can generate a winning ticket through a computer that has "root access." Tulfo noted that this happens once the numbers have been produced.

However, Robles explained that the process is that at the 8:30 p.m. cutoff, all bets are set aside in a standalone flash drive into an offline computer, making it impossible for a newly generated bet to get in.

Multiple winners

On the other hand, Senate Minority Leader Aquilino "Koko" Pimentel III asked the PCSO to submit a position paper on a resolution he filed on October 5, 2022 which seeks to determine and maintain the integrity and trustworthiness of the PCSO games amid allegations of controversies and irregularities.

Pimentel stated during the hearing that he filed the resolution after the 6/55 draw announced a total of 433 winners on Oct. 2, 2022, with multiple numbers of 9 wins.

“It’s really a relevant resolution. I want an explanation on how come there were 433 winners in that draw. Do you have a system to check the multiples of 9 betting system? If you have those system to check it, can you prove it?” Pimentel asked.

The senator also said he also wanted to know the “distinct” number of bets that were placed in that October draw.

Pimentel also pointed out that last year, in a span of a month, five major draws were all won which were augmented by the prize fund reserve.

He added that they want to investigate this further since there have been past instances wherein the jackpot reached P500 million naturally yet it took around three to four months or longer for it to be won.

"Ang habol natin dito is palakasin ang pagtitiwala sa PCSO and sa mga laro ng PCSO (What we're after here is to strengthen the trust on PCSO and its games)," he said.

Pimentel pointed out that it was found out in the hearing that the PCSO has not been informing the President on its moves which is something that they have been doing as part of their Charter but they are skipping because they are relying on an opinion letter sent by the executive secretary of the previous administration.

"We call the attention of the PCSO, I hope they modify their behavior. Pag di nila gawin yun, well after na-call na yung attention nila (If they will not do that, after we called their attention), maybe we're open to graft and corruption cases here," he said.