Senator Raffy Tulfo on Monday, March 18 called the attention of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) over the case of an individual who won P600-million in lotto after betting P90-million at three lotto outlets.

Tulfo, during the Senate Committee on Games and Amusement hearing on the integrity of the PCSO lotto draws, pointed out that the bettor “seemingly invested” P90-million or P30-million each for the three outlets in the Binondo area.

“He or she owns these three outlets—Dito sa A, B, C, outlets he placed bets at P30-million each on System 12,” Tulfo explained in Filipino and English.

Tulfo said his concern is focused on the fact that the “investment” during the time the jackpot prize was raised by P500-million to over P600-million.

“The problem I see here is that the prize fund was hiked before he invested P90-million. The jackpot was raised by P500-million to make it P600-million to accommodate the capital and general profit,” he pointed out.

PCSO general manager Mel Robles, however, said the jackpot prize wasn’t immediately won.

But Tulfo questioned this, saying he doubts the person would invest P90-million in a game that he’s not sure he would win.

“Nobody in his right mind, if he or she has that P90-million and he will gamble it in a lotto game not knowing that he may not win,” Tulfo pointed out.

“Of course, the person will invest such amount with a guarantee that the investment would be returned to him one way or another or somehow, precisely because he owns these three outlets,” he explained.

Tulfo, however, did not mention, which lotto game and the exact date when the over P600-million was claimed.

Also during the hearing, Robles refuted Tulfo’s statement that there was a bettor who won 20 times in a span of one month.

But Tulfo went on to bare more cases of multiple winnings, citing one bettor who won 37 times in 2023 and claimed a total of P8.325-million from the three-digit lotto games.

The senator noted there seems to be “uniformity” in the way he won the same amount of 225,000 eight times in July; nine times in August; two times in September; four times in October; 10 times in November, and four times in December.

“This amounted to 8.3 million—so what is the probability of one person to hit many, many tmes in a period of six months with the same amount?” Tulfo pointed out.

Also during the hearing, the senator grilled the PCSO on how the agency remitted taxes to the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) from lotto winnings, when records show that hundreds of lotto winners did not provide their taxpayer’s identification number (TIN).

“Based on PCSO records, there are thousands of winning bettors but only hundreds of them have TIN numbers,” Tulfo said.

“From now on I suggest that you don’t submit 000 TIN number to the BIR for the tax you would remit from the winnings because it will sow confusion and people will begin to think that you (people at PCSO) claimed the prizes yourselves,” the lawmaker told PCSO officials.