3 Winnipeg women share $10M Lotto 6/49 prize

Sunday, July 19, 2009 posted 11:10 AM EDT

Three Winnipeg women are Manitoba's newest millionaires.

Lani Bonifacio, Carmelita Aquino-Smith and Linda Lagman -- three Filipina immigrants who work at Kromar Printing -- will each take home a third of the $10,772,510 winning ticket they purchased at Portage Place Shopping Centre.

The two other winning tickets from Wednesday's $32,317,530 Lotto 6/49 jackpot were bought in Ontario.

"We were just sitting around (work) saying, 'I wonder who won the jackpot?' " Aquino-Smith said at a news conference yesterday afternoon. "So I borrowed my friend's newspaper and I checked them there. I said, 'Oh my God, we have one! There's another one! Oh my God, there's another one!

"We have all the numbers! We won the jackpot!"

Once the ticket was double-checked, the celebration started.

For Lagman, 62, the lottery win was a long time coming.

Back in 1978 a visit to a fortune teller in the Philippines indicated she may have the luck needed for a draw like a national lottery.

"She looked at my hand and said, 'Did you buy a lottery ticket?' " Lagman said. "I said 'No.' She said you better buy -- you're going to win."

More than three decades later, the prophecy came true.

The three women, who play the lottery together when the jackpots are high, have no plans for any immediate elaborate purchases and all remain undecided regarding their current work situations.

"I don't really know yet, but we took (Thursday) off and (yesterday) ... I don't know about this weekend," Aquino-Smith laughed. "We're going to think about it, whether we're going to go back on Monday or take our holidays then."

Friends and family of the three were still in shock yesterday.

"I still can't believe it," said Dennis Lagman, Linda's husband, "but I saw the cheque!"

The winning ticket is the seventh-largest lottery prize won in the province. The largest prize in Manitoba was a ticket worth $27.2 million, claimed in Winnipeg on Nov. 12, 2005.

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