Dad buys 40 lottery tickets — all winners — and wears costume to claim $30M in China
A costume-clad father in China took home a massive prize after buying 40 winning lottery tickets.
The man from China, going by the pseudonym of Li, started playing the lottery 10 years ago, he told officials at the Guangxi Welfare Lottery Issuance Center. He became fond of a specific set of seven numbers, repeatedly using these numbers to play.
He stopped by a lottery station on Oct. 21 and spent $11 buying 40 lottery tickets with his usual numbers— 02, 15, 19, 26, 27, 29+02 — then went home, lottery officials said. He woke up the next morning and learned that he’d won — 40 times.
Li won $765,000 for each ticket, a total of about $30.6 million (219 million yuan), the South China Morning Post reported.
He showed up to claim his prize in a bright yellow cartoon costume, photos show. The costume was the lottery’s mascot, according to the release.
Li wanted to keep the prize money a secret from his family, lottery officials said. “I have not told my wife or kid. I am concerned that they might feel superior to other people and will not work or study hard in future,” he said, according to the South China Morning Post.
After taxes and donating a portion of his winnings to the lottery fund that supports vulnerable people, Li took home $24 million (171 million yuan), lottery officials said in the Oct. 24 news release.
He says he hasn’t decided how to spend the rest of the prize money.
Guangxi is a region in southern China about 1,180 miles southwest of Shanghai.
Google Translate was used to translate the news release form the Guangxi Welfare Lottery Issuance Center.
This story was originally published November 2, 2022 at 1:50 PM with the headline "Dad buys 40 lottery tickets — all winners — and wears costume to claim $30M in China."
