Lotto

William F. Rochford easily wins this year's award as the biggest Lotto loser of them all. For displeasing the governor by speaking too candidly, Mr. Rochford was fired last week as director of the State Lottery Agency. Too many "missteps and miscues" had occurred, according to the governor's office.What triggered the firing was Mr. Rochford's audacity in telling a reporter why lottery proceeds are now expected to come in a whopping $106 million below budgetary estimates. The reason, according to the lottery director, is that Gov. William Donald Schaefer had insisted that revenue projections for the new Keno game be puffed up to help ease his budget problems.

A group of 14 McDonald's employees from the Baltimore area are still convinced they were winners in the massive $656 million Mega Millions jackpot drawing earlier this year - despite being told otherwise by lottery officials - and are claiming that a co-worker defrauded the Maryland Lottery to avoid sharing a payout with them. On Sept. 19, the group filed a civil lawsuit against their co-worker, Mirlande Wilson, a Westport woman who briefly gained celebrity status and international media attention in April after claiming to be the holder of a winning ticket purchased in Baltimore County.

Persistence paid off for a Baltimore County couple who have been buying Lotto tickets twice a week, every week for the last two years.After spending the Easter weekend out of town, Michael and Carolyn Rogers of Edgemere discovered Monday evening that they had won $3 million in the Saturday lottery drawing."

You know, I've been ever so hopeful that the economic slump we're suffering through will turn itself around. That's the teeny, tiny optimist in me talking. But this week, I got news that just really depressed me. What in the world could ever sway my ever-so-sunny disposition, you ask? Swiss Lotto Netherlands e-mailed me to say: "CONGRATULATIONS!!!.....YOU HAVE WON 750,000 Euros "You have been awarded 750,000 Euros in the SWISS-LOTTO Satellite Software email lottery in which e-mail addresses are picked randomly by Software powered by the internet through the worldwide website.

Chances to win the twice-weekly Lotto drawings dwindled yesterday as the Maryland State Lottery Agency announced it is ending the pick-six game early next year - and replacing it with a new one called Multi-Match. Lotto, which began in 1983 and has produced 622 winners of jackpots valued (before taxes) at $1 million or more, will have its final drawing Feb. 1. Multi-Match, like Lotto, will be a six-number game with drawings on Wednesdays and Saturdays. But where Lotto tickets offer two lines of numbers, Multi-Match tickets will have three-and allow players to "mix" them for prizes, except for the top jackpot.

Maryland Lottery officials have changed the twice-weekly drawing of the lotto game to 11: 07 p.m. Wednesdays and Saturdays as part of an effort to improve sales.The change from the 7: 55 p.m. drawing time began last night. Lottery spokesman Carroll H. Hynson Jr. said the move gives players three more hours to buy tickets. It also approximately coincides with the 11 p.m. drawing time on Fridays for winning numbers in the Big Game, a new multistate lottery that Maryland is part of.Pub Date: 9/12/96

Christmas doesn't get much merrier than this -- $3.5 million for two winners in the Christmas Eve Lotto drawing by the Maryland State Lottery Agency.However, one ticket-holder has yet to come forward and the North Carolina man who holds the other winning ticket has decided he would rather enjoy his wealth in relative obscurity, lottery spokeswoman Shirley Miller said.Miller said the man, a resident of Winston-Salem, N.C., declined to sign a publicity release after he was confirmed as a winner and could be identified only as W. Lewis.

Not long ago, a lingering summer cold chased me to a neighborhood pharmacy. As miserable as I was, I felt even sorrier for a young woman who had just handed a prescription to the pharmacist. She cradled an infant who was flushed and cried incessantly.As I watched, she placed the child on a chair and moved a few feet down the counter. The pharmacy, it seemed, dispensed more than medicine. Pulling a tattered notebook from her purse, the woman began reading numbers to a waiting clerk. As the lottery machine spewed forth printed tickets, she turned yet another page in her notebook and asked the clerk what she had already spent.

Persistence paid off for a Baltimore County couple who have been buying Lotto tickets twice a week, every week for the last two years.After spending the Easter weekend out of town, Michael and Carolyn Rogers of Edgemere discovered Monday evening that they had won $3 million in the Saturday lottery drawing."

When Charlotte A. Fletcher checked her Maryland lottery ticket on Sunday, things got a little blurry."I had to put my contacts in," the 46-year-old federal employee recalled.After the ticket came into focus, Fletcher saw these numbers: 2, 12, 29, 32, 40, 44.She had hit pay dirt."I may have to get new carpeting over where I've paced the floor," Fletcher said, of the two sleepless nights she spent in anticipation of cashing in her $8 million ticket.Fletcher appeared happy, but fatigued, as she picked up the first installment of her booty -- a check for $390,629, before taxes.

Maryland Lottery sales topped $1.5 billion for the first time in the fiscal year that ended in June, a jump of more than 5 percent from the year before, lottery director Buddy Roogow said yesterday. More than $501 million in revenue is headed to the state's coffers, exceeding budget estimates by $10 million, Roogow said. Most is earmarked for the general fund, but more than $20 million will go toward the stadium fund. The lottery is the state's third-largest revenue source. State revenue, player prizes and payouts to retailers all increased by about 5 percent from last year's figures, Roogow said.

Twenty-two years ago, a million bucks was a fortune. Not so much anymore. And that, in short, explains the fall of Maryland Lotto. When Lotto made its debut on Oct. 31, 1983, it was the big ticket in town. There were advertisements promoting its arrival. State government officials wished it good luck - if only in the hope it would help line the state's coffers. And Marylanders all over the state plunked down dollars in hopes of landing the huge windfall. And many did. During its reign, Lotto - a six-digit game that for more than two decades was the vice of dedicated gamblers and occasional thrill-seekers alike - produced 623 millionaires (before taxes)

Chances to win the twice-weekly Lotto drawings dwindled yesterday as the Maryland State Lottery Agency announced it is ending the pick-six game early next year - and replacing it with a new one called Multi-Match. Lotto, which began in 1983 and has produced 622 winners of jackpots valued (before taxes) at $1 million or more, will have its final drawing Feb. 1. Multi-Match, like Lotto, will be a six-number game with drawings on Wednesdays and Saturdays. But where Lotto tickets offer two lines of numbers, Multi-Match tickets will have three-and allow players to "mix" them for prizes, except for the top jackpot.

A million bucks doesn't buy dreams like it used to. The first Maryland lottery game to offer $1 million prizes seems likely to become extinct, a victim of players who opt to gamble instead on mega-jackpots. Introduced in November 1983 to help bail out financially strapped localities such as Prince George's County and Baltimore, Maryland Lotto -- once the lottery's flagship game -- is showing its age, according to state officials. In the past fiscal year, Maryland Lotto sales dropped 5 percent while every other game posted gains, according to the latest figures.

Robert J. Laird, a founding official of the Maryland State Lottery who created some of the early games and directed its marketing and advertising, died of cancer Friday at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. He was 75 and lived in the Wiltondale section of Towson. Born in Baltimore and raised in Govans and Rodgers Forge, he was a 1946 graduate of Loyola High School. After service in the Marine Corps, he earned a business degree from the Johns Hopkins University - where he was long active in alumni affairs.

A ticket matching the winning numbers from Monday's Maryland Lotto drawing - worth a $9.2 million annuity - was purchased Monday at Martin's Food Store in Freedom Village Shopping Center in Eldersburg, lottery officials said. The winning numbers are 5, 16, 31, 33, 35 and 46. Nine winners matched five numbers for a $1,500 prize in the Monday drawing. The Lotto drawing tomorrow will be worth an estimated $1 million. Information: 410-318-6220.

Wanna Limpawuchara says she only plays "the biggies." So when the Lotto jackpot climbed toward $9 million this week, the Thai-born nurse wanted a piece of it.What she and her husband, Bundhit, 46, a medical technologist, got yesterday was the whole nine yards, er, million, as the only winners of Wednesday's drawing.It took a little doing and a lot of luck, though, said Mrs. Limpawuchara, 45. The lottery machine at an Ellicott City pizza shop was broken when she tried to buy tickets Tuesday.

If $8.9 million can turn your luck around, Lena M. Meeks and Billy Dean Howell Jr. are ready to give it a whirl.Meeks, 24, and Howell, 22, both of Middle River, were the sole winners Saturday night of the third-largest Maryland Lotto jackpot ever awarded to a single winner.On Thursday they will begin collecting on a 20-year Lottery Agency annuity paying about $451,000 now and $446,000 in each of the next 19 years, all before taxes.Looking a little dazed by their sudden wealth, Meeks, a secretary, and Howell, assistant manager of a pizza store, appeared yesterday at Lottery headquarters with an attorney, and told and retold their story.

The odds were never better for players of the Maryland Lotto. Errant balls spilling from the machine just seconds before the live broadcast Saturday night forced two drawings and two sets of winning numbers instead of the usual one. The first set of winning numbers was drawn from a swirling mix of pingpong ball-size spheres that was two balls shy of a full load. But no one picked either winning combination, and the jackpot, estimated to be $3.5 million, will go unclaimed. Still, lottery officials were left with a mystery on their hands.

State lottery officials said last night they would honor two sets of winning Lotto numbers after a malfunction forced them to hold a redrawing. "The machine didn't have the correct number of balls in it. We're going to honor two numbers," said Jimmy White, communications director for the Maryland lottery. Moments before the regular on-air 11:10 drawing for the $3.5 million jackpot, officials realized that a few of the 49 balls in the drawing machine had dropped out, White said. Officials tried to retrieve all the balls in time for the drawing but realized soon after that there were only 47 in the drum.