A couple in Oregon who won a lottery jackpot prize of $1.3 billion dollars plan to give half the winnings to a friend. Forty-six-year-old Cheng Saephan is an immigrant from Laos, who moved to Portland with his wife Duanpen in the late 1990s and has been battling cancer for eight years. The winner, who chose to remain anonymous, says he will divide the prize with his friend Laiza Chao, an Oregon state senator and former vice mayor of Portland, which is home to a large Iu Mien community.

Lao officials are rigging the national lottery, manipulating winning numbers to avoid large pay-outs, sources in the communist nation tell RFA’s Lao Service. Drawings frequently show numbers that disappear from purchased tickets or are deemed unlucky and unlikely to win, the sources say. For example, on Oct. 14 this year, the number 09 vanished from sold tickets throughout the day of the drawing, but appeared as 5 minutes before the drawing, a source told RFA.

In a statement to RFA, deputy finance minister and state lottery supervisor Sila Viengkeo said the office of prime minister Thongloun Sisoulith issued an Aug. 17 directive requiring the state lottery to reduce the number of drawings from two to one each week and work with local police departments to handle the lottery more transparently. He also promised to address allegations of corrupt practices in lottery games.