Small Minnesota Store Sells Lucky $1 Million Powerball Ticket

Pam Lestico of Little Falls, Minnesota is a disciplined long-time lottery player who purchases just one ticket for each of the Powerball's bi-weekly drawings. This precise strategy turned out to be an effective one, as Pam managed to be the lucky winner of the Powerball jackpot second-tier prize worth $1 million. The winning second-place ticket was for Saturday's December 9th, 2017 drawing.

Read: Largest Powerball Jackpot in Louisiana Claimed

While claiming her $1 million prize at the State Lottery headquarters located in Roseville, Minnesota, Pam Lestico says, “I always said, 'Someday I'm going to win,' and I did! She went on to say, “I was in my pajamas, jumping up and down and screaming.” Lestico's daughter went on to say. “She deserves it. She has a heart of gold.”

To win the second tier $1 million players must correctly match the first 5 main numbers for the drawing, so basically everything except the Powerball number. Lestico becomes the fourth lucky Minnesota native to win the $1 million Powerball prize for the 2017 calendar year.

The first lucky winner was Greg Anderson for the March 18th drawing, and then Jean Davis for the August 23rd drawing, up to Sobhi Elgharabawi for the November 18th drawing. And now Pam Lestico.

Lestico purchased her ticket from a Casey's General Store located in Little Falls, Minnesota. And the location has turned out to be an incredibly lucky location for lottery players. The same location sold a $50,000 scratch-off prize in September 2017, a $73,000 Northstar Cash jackpot in March 2016, a $50,000 scratch-off prize in February 2012, and then a $25,000 prize for the Minnesota Millionaire Raffle game.

Casey's General Store will receive a $5,000 bonus for selling the winning $1 million ticket.

The numbers Pam used to snag the $1 million prize were: 25, 36, 37, 55, and 60.

Lottery Winners’ Stories; Don’t Make the Same Mistakes

Everyone dreams of winning the lottery. Whenever jackpots reach new highs, everyone goes out to purchase lottery tickets hoping and wishing that one of the tickets they have bought would change their lives forever or visit websites such as https://www.uk49.net/ to play lotto games. However, the bitter reality is that most of us will not get the opportunity to win huge sums of money via the lottery, but there are some people out there who have been this lucky. There is a winner every time, but what happens after they win? Where those people are and what do they do with their winnings? Have they achieved what they wanted? 

You would think that everything would be easy once you have succeeded in winning the lottery, but some of the jackpot winners have struggled quite a bit to collect their winnings and some have ended up with nothing. If you ever turn out to be lucky enough to win, learn from the stories of these winners and don’t make the same mistakes they did:

- Handing a ticket to a friend ($750,000) 

A winning lottery ticket was purchased in Georgia by Jose Antonia Cua-Toc, an undocumented immigrant, in 2010. Since he didn’t have the proper paperwork for his immigration and didn’t want to be deported back to Guatemala, he was afraid of claiming his jackpot. Therefore, he reached out to his friend and boss Erick Cervantes and made an agreement with him to pick up the money on his behalf. Unsurprisingly, his friend showed his true colors and took the money for himself, claiming that Cua-Toc had purchased the ticket on his behalf. Luckily, the surveillance footage of the ticket’s purchase was viewed by the court in 2012 and ruled in Cua-Toc’s favor.

- Buying a ticket and then forgetting about it ($1 million) 

Ron Yurcis of Illinois made this mistake when he purchased a lottery ticket in August 2012 and promptly forgot about it. Three months later in November, Yurcus decided to clean his desk and found a bunch of tickets. He decided to check the numbers for fun and got to know that one of them was worth $1 million. What lessons do you learn from this? You should clean your desk more often and it is a better idea to play lottery online on websites like https://www.uk49.net/. If you win a small amount, it is transferred in your account and you are informed if you win big so you can collect the money.

- Get your ticket stolen ($15 million) 

When it comes to winning the lottery, some people are really dedicated and they purchase tickets regularly for years. This is exactly what Etta May Urquhart did who invested in the California lottery for about 18 years.When she won $15 million, she made the same mistake as Cua-Toc and asked her son, Ronny Orender to sign the ticket and claim it for her. He chose to cheat his own mother and claimed the jackpot for himself. She took him to court and successfully sued him for stealing her winnings.

- Tossing your ticket in the garbage ($1 million) 

It has happened to all of us at one point; we throw a couple of dollars or checks in the garbage. But, one lottery winner actually ended up throwing their winning ticket away, which was worth a million dollars. During a trip to a supermarket, Joseph and Joanne Zagmi decided to get a scratch-off lottery ticket. They returned home, unloaded their groceries and tossed out the bag without taking out the ticket. Luckily, the next day they remembered that they threw the ticket out and went looking for it in the dumpster and it won them the jackpot. Here again if you decide to play the lottery online like at Lottosend, there will be no such risk as you get an online receipt and ticket scan that cannot be tossed away.

- Establishing a demolition derby ($15 million) 

People make plans of what they will do if they ever win a lottery. Some talk about investing in vacations, cars, houses or even in education. When Michael Carroll won $15 million in a British lottery jackpot back in 2002, he had quite a different plan in mind. He chose to use his winnings for throwing a demolition derby party for the new cars he had bought. This is basically a competition in which the drivers smash cars against one another and the car left at the end is the winner. The rest are just smashed up parts. He also threw away his money on women and drugs and also went to jail a couple of times. The money had to run out with such a lifestyle and it did. 

- Gambling away your winnings ($5.4 million) 

Lottery itself is a gamble, but the irony is that various lottery winners end up gambling their winnings away. In the 1980s, a woman in New Jersey, Evelyn Adams managed to win the lottery twice and it seemed she had all the luck in the world. But, it seemed that her lucky streak didn’t last for long. Adams succeeded in winning $5.4 million from the lottery, but lost most of it at Atlantic City when she decided to push her luck. She helped out some people too, but her money didn’t last.

These stories of the lottery winners show that winning the lottery doesn’t automatically makes things better. Just because you have won doesn’t mean it is all smooth sailing from there. There are a lot of risks involved until you finally get the cash and you have to be extra cautious because even the people closest to you will not hesitate in taking advantage of you. In addition, you also need to have a plan of what you are going to do with your winnings because you certainly want to do better than just to blow them away on useless activities. Last, but not the least, it is a good idea to try online games at https://www.uk49.net/ and other websites as they are more secure and offer greater benefits.

Australian Lottery Agents

The Next Rich Man Of Australia Should Keep The Oz Lotto Ticket Safe

One person in Australia with an Oz Lotto ticket must get ready to become rich. The jackpot for the lottery has rolled over for quite a few times now and we can expect someone to win big very soon. The Oz Lotto, which is played with 7 numbers to match, is one of the most famous lotteries in Australia. The draws are conducted on every Tuesday. Since there are 7 numbers to match, even if no one wins the jackpot there are many other winners of some great cash prizes. 

Currently the Oz Lotto jackpot is fully swollen up and the next draw for the huge $40 million will be held on August 11, 2015. If someone wins the jackpot this coming Tuesday, that person is definitely going to see a huge change in their life. The prize money for the latest draw was $30 million. No one could win the jackpot but there were many other winners who went away with some huge secondary prizes. The division two prize money was just a little more than 24 thousand dollars. There were 13 players who had the ticket numbers that matched the second division prize.

There were 150 winners for the third division prize as well. This was the 1120th draw for Oz Lotto and there were literally hundreds of thousands of players who won something out of the lottery even if they were not able to hit the jackpot. The jackpot number for the latest draw was 14-19-40-9-44-8-41 with 18 and 4 as supplementary numbers to take the jackpot amount even higher. Oz Lotto starts with $2 million and this rollover started officially on the draw that took place on June 30, 2015. The draw just before that saw a winner of the huge jackpot. 

The last jackpot was won on June 23, 2015. The jackpot prize was $15 million so you can already see that the current jackpot is even more than double of this jackpot. The winning number for the last jackpot was 36-2-5-45-19-27-9 with supplementary numbers as 41 and 7. This huge jackpot was won by only one ticket. The second division prize went to 4 people and the prize for this division was $48,509. The last prize for this draw was $13.45. Just on May 26, 2015 a syndicate had won a huge $30 million jackpot on the 1110th draw of the lottery.

This was a very unique win for the syndicate. Two of the players with the ticket number had already come forward as soon as the results were announced and became part of the media. This huge jackpot was won with numbers: 26-9-42-39-32-40-44 with 11 and 4 as supplementary numbers. The interesting thing about this win was that there was someone else who had this ticket – it was the manager of the kiosk from where the ticket came out. The manager says he had chosen these numbers because they had not appeared for quite some time and later on he had decided to give the ticket to the syndicate.

Make the Euro Millions Lottery More Fascinating by Playing Online!

It is possible to play the Euro Millions lottery online. A lot of people record their bets online by selecting or picking their five preferred major numbers ranging between 1 to 50, and afterwards selecting two lucky star figures from a smaller range running from 1 to 9.

A number of people have been playing similar number for many years; it might be their lucky figure, their birthday, or their kid’s birthday. In case you do not possess any lucky numbers, it is possible for you to allow the computer to select your numbers at random. It may not be much fun, but it works.

Methods to Enhance your Winning Chances in Lottery

You may or may not win the jackpot; however, it is possible for you to win prizes. You can attain this by matching a minimum of two of the major numbers and one number from lucky star. 

Those odds may make you try severally. You are able to also play in syndicates in case you do not desire to play alone. This method allows you to pool the numbers of your lottery to increase your chances of winning. If the odds are favorable to you, give it a go.

The syndicate for e-lottery provides you with the opportunity of pooling your lottery numbers with the individuals who have joined the site for paid subscription. The odds of you being a winner are greatly raised as you will be dividing it to 1:4.

There are teams of 39 members; every syndicate consists of 36 entries in the drawing. This provides you with 36 opportunities for winning. You are going to even obtain your personal e-lottery website; this enables you to view your syndicated numbers, your profile and earnings as well.

On the whole, the odds of being a winner in the Euro Millions lottery are 1:24. The drawing is carried out at 9:00 pm each Friday evening. This would undoubtedly be a superb way of beginning your Saturday if you became a winner!

If there is no winner, the jackpot is rolled over and this can occur 10 times, forming a massive quantity to try for.

The Appeal in Playing Euro Millions Online

The most ideal aspect about online playing of the Euro Millions lottery is the convenient method it is set up. All that is required is for you to log into e-lottery and select your numbers. Each of this can be carried out comfortably at home.

You eliminate the chances of getting caught up in traffic and being in a hurry prior to dinner or after, or misplacing your ticket. As the lottery is played online, it is possible for you to view the results online also. In addition, as it is anonymous, no one will realize when you win.

Where this Lottery Is Played

One can play the Euro Millions in UK, Spain, France, Belgium, Austria, Ireland, Switzerland, Portugal and Luxembourg. The website for e-lottery indicates the amounts and times for every lottery, which depends on your country.

In America, it has been reported that people do not participate in the lottery until it goes up to a specific amount. It might remain at 5 million for many months. When it increases to as much as 25 or 50 million, there is a rush and more tickets for the lottery are sold.

Spanish Christmas Lottery (Lotería de Navidad) Is This Real Or A Scam?

There are so many lotteries across the world that it's kind of difficult to know what ones really do pay off and which ones leave you penniless. Almost all lotteries are based on equations that dictate the outcome of the drawings and the odds of someone winning the big prize. Whether these lotteries are different from state to state in the U.S. or around the world, there's always one big drawing that will gain the attention of everyone wanting to have the chance at winning millions of dollars! The 2015 Spanish Christmas Lottery offers a very unique concept and through some research seems to be a really great opportunity to try out your luck!

This lottery is a really unique lottery option that has really caught on fire. The Spanish Christmas Lottery (Lotería de Navidad) delivered €2.24 billion in prizes last December 22, 2014. Almost 28 million players profited from the one in seven winning odds and many people really did win prizes. The lottery is predicting even higher winnings and chances for 2015 then at any other time. So let's take a closer look at the mechanisms that propel this lottery to attracting millions of people with millions of dreams.

The Spanish Christmas Lottery is drawing the attention of numerous commercials, news medias and individual reports during the months leading up to the big drawing for 2015. With approximately 98% of Spanish adults entering the lottery, millions of people will watch students of the San Ildefonso School singing out the winning numbers at the Lotería Nacional Hall in Madrid. As there are 15,304 ways of winning with each and every ticket, the event lasts around 3 hrs and continues on until the entire prize pool has given away!

How Spanish Christmas Lottery works?

There are 100,000 per-designated numbers that include five-digit codes that range from 00000-99999.

This lottery offers a huge prize pool worldwide of €2.24 billion and each ticket is printed in 160 identical codes.

All tickets are composed of 10 shares that can be purchased individually.

This is the really attractive breakdown of the equation: 100,000 tickets – 160 copies = 160 million shares on the market place! There are 1:100,000 chances of winning the grand prize of €4 million or 160 jackpot winners.

The appealing winning odds start off at 1:7 per prize. Adding to that, there are more than 24 million ways for someone to win.

About The World's Largest Raffle Jackpot:

The Spanish Christmas El Gordo Lottery, known locally as Lotería de Navidad is a national raffle that takes place annually. Believe it or not, this raffle started over 200 years ago in 1812 and always takes place over the Christmas season. This raffle is considered the world's largest lottery with over €2.24 billion in prizes, alluring winning odds that start at 1:7 for one prize along with over 27 million other ways you can win.

The History Of Lotería de Navidad:

The very first drawing took place in December, 1812 in the city of Cadiz. The idea was to increase state revenue for the public tax authority and has since been conducted by the Spanish Public Administration. For the first time in 1814, the drawing was held in Madrid and has since become the centre for the Spanish National Lottery drawings.

The Spanish Christmas El Gordo Lottery numbers are drawn in a completely different way then any other lotteries around the world. The students from the San Ildefonso School draw the winning results and sing the numbers to the public at the Lotería Nacional Hall in Madrid.

The Rules For Lotería de Navidad:

The Spanish Christmas Lottery prints 100,000 tickets/billetres with five-digit codes ranging from 00000-99999. Due to the popularity of this game, each ticket is in 160 copies. The tickets are then divided into 10 shares known as ‘décimos’ and then purchased individually. This chosen formula explains the enormous amount of shares available for December 22, 2015's drawing.

100,000 tickets + 160 copies + 10 shares = 160 million shares.

Keep in mind, the distribution of prizes, the number of tickets and shares and the cost may vary from one year to another.

Here's a look at previous years and their equations:

2004: there were 66,000 variations of five-digit numbered tickets with 195 copies.

2005: The number of tickets for sale came to 85,000 that offered 170 copies.

2011: 99,000 tickets were printed in 160 copies.

Winning The Lotería de Navidad El Gordo:

Breaking it down, The Lotería de Navidad El Gordo offers unparalleled odds of winning starting off at 1:7 to win the prize pool of €2.24 billion. The big prize in this raffle is €4 million with chances of winning set at 1:100,000, that is approximately 1,160 times better than the odds of winning the EuroMillions Jackpot!

Should a player hold all 10 shares of the 1st prize winning ticket, they are eligible to claim the €4 million jackpot which is approximately $1.5 Million U.S. Dollars in winnings. Lotería de Navidad will award a total of €640 million in jackpot prizes to all 160 tickets with winning codes.

Approximately 98% of Spanish adults will take part in the Spanish Christmas El Gordo Lottery, even if they rarely or never participate in other local or global lotteries. At this time, it is believed that more than 27.5 million players will collect prizes from the 15,304 possible winning combinations with each ticket for 2015. With percentages this high, there seems to be a very strong belief that even if you do not hit the jackpot, everyone walks away with something.

The number of tickets that will be available for this raffle will become limited as the drawing gets closer to the closing date of December 21, 2015. If you considering joining in on the opportunity to strike it rich, you need to get your tickets as soon as possible. Obviously, as time moves toward the dead-line, there are going to be fewer opportunities to get your hands on remaining tickets.

This lottery offers a lot of winning opportunities with great outcomes. So if your dreams are to become a big winner in a major lottery, this one seems to offer some really great odds! Unlike any other lottery throughout the entire world, Lotería de Navidad seems to really pay out!

Great Guidelines to Assist You Raise Your Chances of Hitting the Jackpot!

It is a great understatement to say that being a lotto winner is hard. If winning was easy, each lottery would go out of business, and it would not be a very profitable business either. However, some strategies and tips exist which raise your chances of being a winner.

Even though there is no foolproof method of enabling you to be a winner in lottery jackpot, some tips are available which will assist you to raise your chances of being a lottery winner.

Obviously, there are some things which can assist you to make sound decisions to win a lottery, and being aware of these tips can be very helpful in determining where to place your money. 

Awesome Tips to Draw You Closer to the Jackpot!

Select your Lottery Game

There are various lottery games to select from and selecting from these games can be your initial step in deciding what chances you have of being a jackpot winner. Some great selections of lottery games include the Powerball, Mega Millions and Euro Millions.

Engage in lotteries whose competition is not so stiff. This might entail you having a jackpot prize which is lower; however, if you desire to be a winner, this might be better than placing your money in a higher jackpot where your chances of winning are very slim.

Select your Personal Number Combination

Lotteries’ winning combinations are normally the ones that are selected manually by the individual and not the ones that are picked randomly by the computer; therefore, select your personal numbers also.

However, you should remember that when selecting your personal number, you need to avoid selecting your birthdays. Since there are just 31 days in one month and the same number of people are selecting numbers depending on their birthday, this also signifies that similar number of people will most probably select the same numbers which you are picking also.

Play Regularly

Play many times so as to raise your chances of winning the lottery jackpot. Obviously, the more times you play, or the higher the number of tickets you have, the more your chances of being a winner.

Rather than purchasing one ticket or two at a go, you can purchase more also in a single game. It goes without saying that when you play more often and raise the number of tickets you buy in a single game, this assists in raising your chances of being a winner also. 

Set a Budget

You should think of your budget as well. Prior to participating in the lottery, you need to lay out your limit as far as your budget is concerned. The Lottery should not be your main source of generating money.

Remember that the lottery jackpot might be massive, but this also entails massive risks and doubts also. 

Therefore, ensure that you do not invest all your money on lottery, hoping to win the jackpot!

Conclusion

These are some few things which can assist you to raise your chances of being a jackpot winner. Additional tips can be obtained from professionals and fans as well, to assist you to enhance your chances.

The Importance of SSL Technology When Shopping Online

Since the turn of the millennium and even years before that people have started to do a large portion of their shopping on online websites. These days you can even see how the malls are emptying out slowly and on the last "Black Friday" in the USA and all over the world about 50% of the shopping sprees were done through online shopping and online purchases. 

This means that these everyday online shoppers need to have the best internet security available because most people are paying with their credit cards and while shopping online may seem like an easy and harmless thing to many, most are not aware of the dangers that lurk behind so many doors on the web. 

Malicious software, fake mirror sites, phishing techniques, hacked websites, unsecured money transfers, all of these are alive and kicking and as long as awareness is low people will keep getting dubbed on the internet while trying to innocently shop online. This is why I am writing this article today, in order to bring more awareness to the importance of SSL on the web.

What Can We Do To Make Sure We Are Safe?

First of all never just straight away go and trust a website, without taking a few moments to see any tell-tale signs of bad activities that might be going on. If you take a look at the address in your browser (be it explorer, chrome, firefox or any other browser) you should be able to see the internet protocol that is being used on the page that you are on. 

Before clicking the button that will submit your purchase and all of your credit card information along into the information highway always look for the HTTPS protocol. A payment page should always have an HTTPS protocol, meaning that it is using some kind of SSL (Secure Socket Layer) technology. 

This means that your information is being sent behind a wall of secured layers of data and cannot easily be hacked or stolen. If you are making a payment, even on a trustworthy website and there is no SSL protocol on the payment page, be aware that you might be falling into a trap! 

Who Uses SSL – or Who Doesn't Use it?

SSL technology was made for keeping money transfers secure, safe and private from prying eyes of hackers and malicious computer codes. So always look for that HTTPS in the browser address. Furthermore, if a website is hacked it will almost immediately loose its SSL certificate, in order to show that it has been hacked.

All of the trustworthy websites use it such as online lottery websites where people purchase lottery tickets online, ecommerce websites (dx, ebay, amazon, aliexpress) where merchants sell all kinds of goods, accessories and electrics online and government websites (social security payments, tax payments, hospital payments) always use SSL technology.

To sum it all up, never trust an online transaction that is being made through an internet browser if it does not have the SSL protocol in the web-address. You will usually also see a symbol that looks like a pad-lock next to the web address in your browser when the SSL protocol is being used to show that the site is secure.