Lottery winners can choose to take the prize in a single payment or spread it over 30 years. Forty-six-year-old Laotian immigrant Cheng Saephan chose to split his winnings with a friend, according to an Oregon lottery news conference. He will also use the money to continue his cancer treatment. Saephan is one of ten members of the Iu Mien ethnic group who won $1.3 billion in the Powerball jackpot drawing on Monday.

Sources in Laos say the communist country’s state lottery officials manipulate winning numbers to avoid large pay-outs. Drawings of the national lottery held three times a week often display numbers that disappear from purchased tickets or are deemed unlucky. For example, the winning number in a Oct. 14 drawing—134—was announced but then disappeared from tickets until just 10 minutes before the drawing, an RFA source told RFA’s Lao Service.

On Aug. 17, the office of Lao Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith issued a directive requiring the Ministry of Finance—which oversees the legal state lottery—to work with other ministries to improve management. The directive stipulates that the legal lottery draw be reduced from two to one a week and that the winnings be handled in a more transparent manner. The directive also bans informal football lotteries and lottery chances sold through short messaging services, a government source told RFA’s Lao Service. RFA’s Ounkeo Souksavanh and Bounchanh Mouangkham contributed to this report.