A couple in Oregon is sharing a prize of hundreds of millions of dollars after winning a lottery game. They say they will take half of the money and give the other to a friend who helped them buy the tickets. The winner in Portland, Saephan Chanthavong, and his wife Duanpen, are members of the Iu Mien ethnic group. They are among thousands of Iu Mien who escaped from Vietnam after the war to the United States. They settled in the Portland area, where they now have a Buddhist temple, churches, social organizations, and businesses.

Lottery officials in the communist country of Laos are rigging the system, manipulating winning numbers to avoid large pay-outs, sources in the Southeast Asian nation tell RFA’s Lao Service. The winning numbers in the national lottery, which takes place three times a week, often disappear from purchased tickets or show up as different numbers during a drawing. For example, the number 09 appeared as 509 in a drawing on Oct. 14 this year, but changed to 134 only an hour before the draw.

Private business interests have been tasked with running the lottery, which has led to corruption and is not transparent to the public, a state official said. “The government should resume control of the lottery and stop giving it to private businesses,” he said. Private business interests include individuals with ties to the ruling elite, he added.