David W. Coterel, a retired General Motors employee from Riverside, Ohio, and David W. Coterel Jr. and daughter Lynn Hiles of Dayton won the largest prize ever by the Hoosier Lottery and the fourth-largest jackpot in Powerball history.

Lynn quit her nighttime postal worker job two days later and David Jr. quit as a machine repairman a day after that.

“The hardest part was a lack of sleep,” said David Jr. “You lay down and your mind races: What am I going to do? What am I going to do? There’s a lot of questions.”

The winning ticket was purchased at a Speedway store in Richmond on August 25. The largest Powerball jackpot ever to that time, $295.7 million, was sold in July 1998 to a group of 13 co-workers from a factory in suburban Columbus, Ohio, from a Speedway just three miles away.

Based in West Des Moines, Iowa, Powerball is a 29-state game with some of the word’s biggest prizes.

The winning numbers were 2, 8, 23, 29 and 35, and the Powerball was 19.

The international organization Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada (GFOA) has awarded the California Lottery the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting for the Fiscal Year 2005-06 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR).

The GFOA is a nonprofit professional association with offices in Chicago, IL, and Washington D.C.

The California Lotto has won this certificate, the highest form of recognition in the area of governmental accounting and financial reporting, for four consecutive years. “This award from the Government and Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada proves that our staff is among the best,” said Lottery Director Joan Borucki. Over 50 staff members are employed by California Lottery’s Finance Division.

Incuded in the criteria for the certificate is demonstrating a “spirit of full disclosure.”

Since its inception in 1985, over $19 billion have been contributed to California schools by the Lottery - at least 34 percent of the $52 billion total sales. Over 50 per cent of sales is awarded as prizes, and retailers have earned $3.3 billion.

Google El Gordo Primitiva and you’ll find loads of scam alerts from people who received an email telling them they won the jackpot. What’s the first clue that it’s too good to be true? They never bought a ticket.

You’ve heard the joke (it’s extremely popular in Spain, where El Gordo is run): the poor widow prays faithfully for years to win the lottery. She has been faithful all her life, despite terrible temptations. She has six hungry children and bills to pay. Finally, one day as she thumbs through her rosary, thunder rolls, the ground trembles below her feet, a brilliant shaft of light descends upon the faithful woman, and a voice says…”Go buy a ticket.”

Clue #2? Grammatical errors galore. #3? Some people “win” every month, and others have begun winning the Dutch lottery as well.

Boy, some people have all the luck.

Of course, there must be some real winners out there, and this weekly lotto awards a 5 million Euro+ jackpot. Odds of winning something (match 2) are 1 in 19. Match 3 = 1 in 299, and so on up to 1 in 3 million to match 5 and 31 million to match 5 plus PB.

It makes you wonder, if you counted up all the false alarms and all the real winners, which side would outnumber the other. It also makes you wonder if the people sending out the scam emails (they ask for personal information used to rip you off) would make more money investing their time in El Gordo instead.