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	A.M. Costa Rica Your daily English-language news source Monday through Friday

A.M. Costa Rica third newspage
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San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2007, Vol. 7, No. 21

Johana Romero sells 21 de la Suerte on commission	Guillermo Bustos is a fixture at the central park in Tibas
They've got your number in the Costa Rican lotteries
By Dennis Rogers Special to A.M. Costa Rica One would think Costa Ricans were obsessed with math given the number of people standing on street corners shouting out numbers. This is the national lottery. Small-time gambling is a regular part of many persons' lives. Some play a favorite number, even leading to scuffles for the most popular when the big Christmas lottery comes around. Others go for the Gallo Tapado and let the vendor chose a number at random. Costa Ricans have available a wide range of small-time gambling options. The main player is the Junta de Protección Social de San Jose, the government lottery agency. It runs the national games and also San Jose’s cemeteries. Its Sunday afternoon drawing is a television event of its own right. The Junta spreads its profits among a bewildering variety of non-profit entities, mostly the government health system, medical research institutes, and programs for children and the elderly. All lottery operators are required to turn over their profits to a charity. None, including the Junta, seems to feel obliged to make available figures for their costs and overhead. The national lottery is the traditional format, with a few large payouts but little reward at the 1-in-a-100 level. Each series of ten tickets costs 3,500 colons, with one piece available for 350 colons. First, second, and third prizes are 60 million colons, about $116,000, 5.4 million colons ($10,425), and 2 million colons ($3,861) if you have all 10 of that series. The final two-digit number pays 34,000 colons ($65.60) by itself, with second and third 7,000 colons ($13.50) and 3,500 colons ($6.75), i.e. your money back. Not counting the large prizes, it returns only about 13 percent. There are secondary prizes such as for one series off with the correct number. The prize table published in newspapers and now on the Internet is so complicated that unclaimed prizes must be a major savings for the Junta. The Christmas gordo pays off more than $1 million and is a common topic of discussion that time of year. The people’s lottery or Chances is the other established Junta product. The entero costs 1,500 colons ($2.90). It has three large prizes with the best 15 million colons ($28,957), but then each two-digit number pays 40,000 colons ($77.22), 14,000 colons ($27) , or 8,000 colons ($15.44) for first, second, and third place, for a total payout of 64 times the amount wagered. Scratch cards give an instant reward or lack thereof, with match prizes from 400 (77 U.S. cents) to 5 million colons ($9,652.50). Six losing tickets can be dropped in an envelope at the Junta building for a drawing to be on a “Wheel of Fortune” type game on television. A new simplified Junta product called Tiempos aims to compete with illegal lotteries by paying 75 times the amount wagered on a single number. It is available in 100-, 200-, and 500-colon denominations. One U.S. dollar is about 518 colons. “I’d have to go change it at the Junta,” says Jorge Zamora, who buys various lottery games regularly around Tibás. “It’s easier to just get [the runner] to pay off even if it’s not as much.” Basically this product has all the disadvantages of the Junta and a payout only slightly better than the numbers games. It has met with practically no interest from the public, according to vendors. The vendors are on commission from the Junta and can return unsold inventory from their regular quota of tickets. The handicapped have priority for the jobs. In San Isidro de Heredia, Luis Vargas has his electric wheelchair set up as a mobile sales table with inventory on display. Luis is Isidireño by birth. He’s sold the second and third prizes in the Sunday lottery, but never the big one. The new 21 de la Suerte is a glitzy operation giving away cars and cash along with the usual white goods. Comercializadora Paschoal S.A, apparently of Brazilian capital, runs the lottery itself. Its chosen charity is the Casa Hogar Crea, an organization dedicated to drug rehab for young people. Despite the yellow shirts like those worn by the Hogar youths who sell pens or calendars at the same intersections, the young women (mostly) selling the tickets	A.M. Costa Rica photos/Dennis Rogers Luis Vargas of San Isidro sells from a wheelchair are employees and not otherwise associated with the charity. They make minimum wage and a 13 percent commission, and presumably are properly insured. Johana Romero was selling 21 de la Suerte tickets at the main intersection in Tibas. Sales are slow in January. She claimed sales of 3 or 4 per hour of the 2,000-colon tickets, though it didn’t look like that many were moving. “In December we could sell 20 to 25 per hour, but nobody has any money now,” she complained. She also had a headache, unsurprising given the amount of carbon monoxide she was breathing. Like a dark shadow in the background flourishes that favorite of organized crime everywhere, the illegal numbers racket. Its allure is convenience, paying 70 to 72 times the amount wagered to a single number, with no big prizes. The number of the Junta’s Sunday drawing provides an undisputed winner. Most of the poorer neighborhoods in the country have someone running numbers, ranging from housewives picking up extra money to more dubious types. Some official vendors even sell numbers on the side. Bets can be placed for as little as 100 colons, with any given number capped to avoid the hassle of big payouts. Generally a “banker” gets 10 percent for backing the undertaking and covering larger payouts, according to sources in the business who unsurprisingly didn’t wish to be named. The rest of the profits after paying winnings are commissions divided up depending on the number of middlemen. Small-scale raffles to raise money for a school trip or such are also common and in theory illegal since the money doesn’t go to a registered charity. Usually the prize is a rice cooker or clothes iron rather than money. Neighborhood raffles of televisions or other big-ticket items smuggled from Panamá take place in December when everyone has a Christmas bonus to squander. These are illegal but mostly above-board as they’ll want to do it again next year. Around Christmas time the Cruz Roja springs into action with its own fundraiser, a bingo game. Raffles using 900 numbers appeared briefly associated with the lead-up to last summer’s football World Cup. The 900 numbers are pay-per-minute lines normally used for horoscopes and phone sex. At first, a brief ad would say “send a text message to register” with tiny print “cost of the call ¢450.” On the line with the lucky caller, a question like, “Who won the 2003 apertura championship, Saprissa, La Liga, or Olimpia?” made it supposedly a game of skill and not chance. The Junta eventually cracked down on these. (Yes, we know Olimpia is not a Costa Rican team.) The profits were to be distributed to an unnamed charity, doubtless after a substantial overhead. Other promotional raffles are often fraudulent. A typical one gives the buyer, say, a ticket for a rice cooker/refrigerator/trip to San Andres for every 5,000 colons of gasoline purchased. Once the ticket is stuffed in the box, no one knows if the prize is ever awarded. Even if the winner is announced in the press as promised, it’s extremely unlikely they will see it. One Heredia gas station recently had glossy color tickets with an invitation to visit its web site for the rules. No mention of the contest was to be found there. Vendors were asked if they tell their customers that according to elementary statistics it doesn’t matter remotely what number to play. They said no.

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A.M. Costa Rica Second newspage
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San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2007, Vol. 7, No. 21

A.M. Costa Rica fourth news page
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San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2007, Vol. 7, No. 21

Venezuela will seek help, perhaps from Iran, to build pilotless aircraft
By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services Venezuela's defense minister says his country is considering building unmanned planes and may look to allied countries — such as Iran — for help. The defense minister, Gen. Raúl Baduel said Monday in Caracas that Venezuela has made progress in the	development of pilotless planes. He also said that Venezuela will look to other countries for help in maintaining its aging U.S.-made F-5 fighter jets. Venezuela has had trouble maintaining the planes since the United States began blocking arms sales to the South American country.


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San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2007, Vol. 7, No. 21

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