So the jackpot resets at $12 million on Mar. 9.

Meanwhile, Powerball blasts up to $170 million on Mar. 10.

Good luck everyone.

Watch for my top 20 list later at this site.

A typical day of work at her Plaquemine store turned extraordinary when Edna Diane Campo of Addis, Louisiana, scratched the first $10,000 top-prize winning Zulu scratch-off ticket.

“I’m not really sure why I decided to play the game because I don’t play scratch-offs that often,” shared Campo.  “I guess every now and then I like to give them a try though.”

Campo and her husband have owned the store where she purchased her ticket, Dickie’s Sportsman Centers  in Plaquemine, Louisiana, for over 30 years.  She shared that her customers have come to know her as the smiling woman who has the coffee ready for them in the mornings and wishes them a safe drive as they leave.

Campo said she plans to use her winnings to pay bills and spruce up her garden with new planters.  She also shared that she probably won’t be able to help spending some on her grandchildren, as well.

Me, I’m playing both.

How does anyone know when dame fortune will smile down on us?

Here’s the dea:

The March 5 Mega Millions jackpot is $133 million.

The March 6 Powerball jackpot is $139 million.

Which one will you play?

Which one will you win?

I wonder if anyone has every won both jackpots?

[See my book to right...answer: not to my knowledge, and I've researched it.]

Let me know how you feel about both games being in most states.

I think it was a long time coming.

Talk about generous. British lottery winners, Nigel Page, 43, and his partner Justine Laycock, 41 have rewarded a hard-working clearr with a $687,500 house and car, after her employers became the U.K.’s biggest lottery winners.

A hard-working cleaner has been rewarded with a £400,000 ($687,500) house and car after her employers became Britain’s biggest lottery winners.

Nigel Page and Justine Laycock won 56 million pounds  (about $38 million, U.S.D.) in the EuroMillions jackpot last month and decided they wanted to thank their cleaner Denise Kelso for her work.

They handed her the keys to their four-bedroom home, which she had kept clean for years, and Ms Laycock’s black Honda Civic in gratitude for her years of service.

The couple have moved into a new 4 million pound ($6 million, U.S.D.) home in England’s West Country, where Ms Kelso will continue working for the couple.

“All you need to know is I love my cleaner very much,” Ms Laycock told the Sunday Mirror, a British newspaper.

Ms Kelso said she and her husband were “taking care” of the winners’ former home.

“It’s still their house and car, but we are living here,” she said.

“They’ve only just won, so I’m sure they’re still trying to decide what they want to do.”

Love the story. Love the generosity. Don’t you?

There was no jackpot winner in the Mega Millions Feb. 26 game, so the rollover brought that jackpot above the $100,000,000 mark for the upcoming Mar. 2 game.

Good luck to everyone who plays the game.

On Feb. 28, watch for my Top 10 list of jackpots in play around the world.

And for more on Lotteries… check out my book, seen at the right on this page.  You can get a copy at amazon.com and other online booksellers. [If not, ask for it.]

Here’s a scam you should watch for.

It happened last year and the con man was sentenced in December.

Queens, New York District Attorney Richard A. Brown and New York Lottery Director Gordon Medenica nabbed  a Far Rockaway man who defrauded several individuals around the state out of large sums of money by creating phony winning scratch off tickets for New York State Lottery games.

What this creep did is cut and pasted winning numbers on losing tickets and then selling them for half the value of the supposed winning tickets – which usually had a winning prize of between $10,000 and $30,000 a ticket.

He has pleaded guilty in the case.

“The defendant has pleaded guilty to having gained the trust of strangers and offering them a way to double their money quickly on a seemingly lucrative financial offer that invariably turned out to be too good to be true,” said District Attorney Brown.

“The defendant’s scheme was nothing more than a variation on a classic con game. People should always be suspicious of any financial scheme that requires them to turn over their money to a complete stranger on short notice.”

New York Lottery Director Gordon Medenica said, “It’s important to take this opportunity to remind everyone of the simple steps that can be taken to protect yourself: sign your ticket, use Lottery Ticket Checkers to see if you’ve won, and always get a validated receipt when cashing a winning ticket. New Yorkers have a well-earned reputation for skepticism, so if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.”

The District Attorney identified the defendant as Alvin Summers, 37, of 79-28 Gouveneur Avenue in the Far Rockaway section of Queens.

GAMES WE PLAY:

No big winners in this past week’s Mega Millions and Powerball games. Both jackpots are topping the $90 million mark.

Good luck to all of us.

“I thought I must have scratched something wrong,” Debra Mauro said when  a check for $1 million was presented to her.

“I thought it just had to be a mistake,” the 54-year-old grandmother said at the retailer where she bought the winning ticket Feb. 3.

“I never played Smooth 7s before,” Mauro said. She bought the ticket from a vending machine as she was on her way to work as an associate manager at the nearby Regal Cinemas.

She said she wasn’t quite sure what to think when she scratched the ticket during a break at work. When she finally convinced herself that she really had a winner, Mauro said: “It’s like eating your favorite candy bar … very sweet.”

Mauro added: “It’s still overwhelming, very overwhelming. It’s not comprehending yet. I don’t believe it.”

Nevertheless, she has a few ideas about what to do with her new wealth. First on the list is a new snowblower and then a new roof and furnace for her house.

Then, she said, she would make promised contributions to the St. Jude Foundation and to Women & Children’s Hospital. “I don’t need luxuries. I already have everything I need,” Mauro said.

But her first stop would be “at the Dollar Store.”

Mauro is a native and lifelong resident of Niagara Falls, with three grown children and five grandchildren. Some of the grandchildren, attending Thursday’s check presentation, jumped for joy, clapped their hands and chanted, “Yea, Grandma.”

She said she buys about $20 worth of Lottery tickets every two weeks and has had some smaller winners, “but nothing like this.”

Asked whether she might consider moving to a new home, she answered: “No, not yet, anyway. Not for at least another year.” She added that she planned to continue baby-sitting some of her grandchildren in the daytime and working at her theater job in the evening.

“That’s my life,” she said. “That’s what I do.”

GAMES WE PLAY:

No winners this past weekend in the Powerball and Mega Millions game.

Jackpots are rising fast: Mega Millions up to $83 million; Powerball topping the $70 million mark.

From our news sources in Indiana (WXIN-TV…thank you folks):  A Greenwood, Indiana couple has come under the wire and finally turned in their old lottery ticket for $2.5 million dollars.

Time was running out.

For more than a week, the Hoosier Lottery has been looking for the winners of a lotto jackpot back in August. The deadline to collect was about to expire.

The winner was 39 year-old Eric White, who bought a Hoosier Lotto ticket in Indianapolis back in August 2009.

He said he never thought about the ticket again until his his wife Lori saw something this week on the news that caught her attention.

“I knew my husband liked to play the lottery, and leave them laying on the dresser or in the office so I asked him if he had any tickets he wanted to check and he said yeah,” said Lori White to Lottery officials.

Still, Eric seemed to be in no rush to check the ticket, so then, Lori sent her husband a text message.

“Two days later, I asked him again did you check those tickets? No, I haven’t yet, he said.”

“I had to call three different people to check the website because I didn’t believe it,” said Eric.

The rest of the story is history: the couple is now $2.5 million richer after only being days away from missing out on the jackpot.

“We couldn’t believe it. We’ve been holding on to it since August!”

Eric and Lori say the first thing they’re going to do with the money is put enough away for their children’s college education.

Awesome. Love stories like this.

The moral of the story: check your old lottery tickets lying around the house. They could make you a millionaire.

He didn’t need to. The store clerk was excited enough for both of them.

“He checked it and then he waved it around,” Campbell told Lottery officials as he claimed his prize. “I saw that $100,000 and I didn’t know what to do.”

The winning ticket was a “Hot $100,000″ Scratcher, which  Campbell bought in Bristol, Virginia.

Campbell, who is retired, said he has no immediate plans for his winnings.

GAMES WE PLAY:

Mega Millions jackpot Feb. 19 is the biggest in the world, at $68 million (USD)

Powerball draw on Feb. 20 carries a $57 million jackpot.

Euro Millions draw on Feb. 19 resets at a 15 million euros jackpot.

MY BOOK (to right)

If you like weird and wonderful stories about winners I’ve met through the years, check it out. Also included: How to play, for beginners. I hope you enjoy it.

Good luck everyone.