$100-Million Jackpot Causes Lottomania

Prospective millionaires jammed convenience stores, supermarkets and gas stations from Pensacola to Key West Friday in the waning hours of a weeklong buying frenzy that has produced a record Florida Lotto jackpot that may yet grow into the richest in history.

The estimated payoff: $100 million plus.

The odds of winning: 1 in 13,983,816.

The number of players who don’t believe they’ll win: 0.

“Everyone thinks they’re going to win,” said Dave Sweezy, director of the Miami regional lottery office. “I guess that’s human nature. But we are urging moderation, reminding them it only takes one.”

Try telling that to the lady who flew in from Las Vegas Friday morning and bought 1,200 of the $1 tickets. Or the players in Tampa and Pensacola who each bought $10,000 worth of tickets. Or Michael Taylor, a 21-year-old University of Miami student who Friday afternoon stood in line behind about 30 other hopefuls in a Circle K store in Coral Gables. “I already had 10 tickets,” he said, “but then I thought of some more numbers. And I just had a feeling. So I’m back to buy five more.”

Despite radio spots from the lottery commission and advice from Florida Gov. Bob Martinez to “play responsibly,” something akin to gold-rush fever continues to rage. “People are coming in with $100, $200, even $300, and they all think that, with a little luck, it could be them,” said Frank Soler, owner of Frank’s Discount in Miami. Many are first-time players. Most players normally spend no more than $5 or $10 a week on the lottery, he added.

In Miami’s Latino neighborhoods, this lottery prize is called “el gordo,” the fat one. But people from all over the country are seeing it as the chance of a lifetime. “I’ve had calls from every state,” said Sweezy, including one from California, where a group of investors offered a check for $13.9 million in exchange for tickets covering every possible combination.

Sweezy explained that it would take one terminal 63 weeks to print out 13.9 million tickets. “These people aren’t thinking,” he added.

So many out-of-state players have been driving into Florida that the lottery commission set up an extra 30 terminals along the Georgia and Alabama borders. Hundreds of Bahamians have flown into Miami this week to buy thousands of tickets, most for illegal resale in the islands, officials admit.

It’s been four weeks since anyone has picked the right six numbers in the weekly Lotto game, and the prize has ballooned to the highest since the Florida lottery was begun in May, 1988. The largest lottery jackpot on record is the $115 million awarded earlier this year in Pennsylvania. That mark could be topped, officials say, if sales Friday and today, typically the biggest of the week, continue at the current pace and if the computers hold up.

At their peak Friday afternoon, the lottery’s 7,500 terminals were spitting out tickets at the rate of almost 600 per second.

While nothing is expected to slow Florida’s Lottomania until sales are cut off 30 minutes before today’s drawing at 11 p.m., one tragic reminder that money does not guarantee happiness did surface earlier in the week. The body of a 35-year-old man was pulled from the Miami River Thursday morning, a week after he had claimed $10,000 won in a scratch-off lottery game. He had $2,505 in his pocket and an empty wine bottle stuck in the front of his pants, police said. The county medical examiner Friday ruled his death an accidental drowning.