Florida Lottery Sales, Not Surprisingly, Soar on D-Day : Jackpot: The top prize was expected to reach at least $100 million. Officials said that tickets are selling at 566 per second--and climbing.

Florida’s megamillion-dollar Lotto frenzy became even more feverish Saturday as last-minute players jammed outlets to buy tickets at a record clip for a jackpot worth at least $100 million.

At noon, sales of the $1 Lotto tickets were running at 566 per second, and climbing, lottery officials said. Almost 9 million tickets had been sold since 7 a.m., bringing the week’s total to $92.2 million.

Ticket sales were to end at 10:30 p.m., 30 minutes before the drawing that has captured international attention.

The estimated prize for the drawing was the second-largest in U.S. history. The biggest is a $115.6-million Pennsylvania jackpot split by 14 winners in April, 1989, and officials said there was a slim chance that last-minute purchases could drive Florida’s payoff to first on the list.

“There are a couple places, remote places, little out-of-the-way places, where for whatever reason they don’t have long lines,” said lottery spokesman Ed George, who considered a Saturday line of 15 people short.

“Every time you turn on the news it’s Lotto, Lotto, Lotto. Everybody’s talking about it,” said Art Yandoc of Miami, who bought 15 $1 tickets before playing tennis.

Lottery officials also said Saturday there was “a 99% likelihood” that there would be at least one winner, since ticket sales had probably covered all 13.98 million possible combinations.

In Florida’s Lotto, players pick six numbers between 1 and 49. The jackpot built to the $100-million level because there was no winner for four weeks in a row.

Lottery Secretary Rebecca Paul said the final amount of the jackpot would not be known until about noon today, when the lottery’s computer also will determine whether there is a winner.

The jackpot continued to attract large-scale purchases from residents of other states, some of whom were scalping the $1 tickets for $2 to $5 in their home states. Authorities in Colorado, Georgia, New York, Louisiana and Washington, D.C., reported making arrests for illegal sales.

Officials said Saturday that people were spending hours in lines outside convenience stores and other ticket outlets.

At a truck stop in Jennings, five miles from the Georgia border, the wait for tickets lasted five hours and vehicles with license plates from New York, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Louisiana and even California were backed up on the Interstate 75 ramp.

“We do more lottery than diesel. The trucks can’t get in here,” said Liz Burse, manager at Johnson and Johnson truck stop. One bettor tried to jump into line and “they nearly lynched him,” she said.

Some bettors were buying tickets by the hundreds, or even thousands.

Bill Villafina of Kissimmee said he spent more than seven hours purchasing tickets--all part of a plan to spend “somewhere in the neighborhood of $50,000,” primarily for New Jersey relatives.

About 175 employees at Jensen Corp., a Ft. Lauderdale manufacturer of restaurant and hospital equipment, found a Lotto ticket tucked into each of their paycheck envelopes Friday.

“It used to be said that the American dream was a good job, owning your own home and a chicken in every pot,” a company letter said. “Nowadays, the American dream is to win a state lottery.”