Laos lotterie draws are popular with participants as they offer huge rewards. Results are announced three times every week and keep people suspensefully waiting as they compare their tickets with official results. Private business interests manage the lottery on behalf of the state; some companies owned by relatives of ruling elite members pay an annual fee to do their work, although none is ever inspected or controlled directly, according to sources interviewed by RFA.

Questions have recently been raised regarding the integrity of Laos lotto. Four consecutive drawings featured numbers which represent felines – something considered bad luck in Laos culture – leading some players to speculate whether numbers might have been fixed. Also, three consecutive drawings at the end of September saw numbers associated with turtles which are believed to bring bad luck in Laos appear as winning numbers, raising further suspicion.

Last month, the Laos Lottery Committee took steps to address these concerns by altering lottery drawings from three per week to two. Also, live results would be presented directly. These moves were implemented so as to gain more trust for playing lottery, according to Vilasack Phommaluck from Finance Ministry who serves on lottery steering committee.

Despite these changes, lottery sales have continued to decrease steadily; in the first quarter of this year they fell by more than 30 percent compared to what they were during the same timeframe in 2013.

Some of this decline may be attributable to an increase in illegal lottery operations run from abroad, according to sources. Such operations sell lotteries based in countries like Vietnam, Thailand and China – encouraging regular gambling habits among members of society. The Ministry of Finance has repeatedly demanded action be taken against such illegal operations that lure people into habitual gambling habits.

But according to sources in Laos, the Laos Lottery Committee is failing to stem these shenanigans. While they supervise national lottery operations, their role does not extend to individual lotteries run privately by local businesses which know which numbers have been sold and can use these insights to manipulate results without paying out large prizes, claimed one source.

Saephan, an Iu Mien subsistence farmer and former soldier who assisted American forces during the Vietnam war, and his wife plan to donate part of their winnings to their Portland-area family that raised them as well as return to Laos in search of her birth family. They plan to retire from their respective careers – Saephan as school district aide and she as temporary worker at Nintendo of America respectively – as well as establish their own small farm to cultivate vegetables and raise chickens with hopes to one day open their own restaurant!