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A businesswoman from Paraíba correctly guessed the Mega-Sena numbers, but lost R$202 million due to a ticket error; the case has been in Federal Court since May 2025.
Luck seemed to be about to change the life of a businesswoman from João Pessoa (PB) at the beginning of May of 2025, when the numbers drawn from the Mega-Sena 2.743, held in May 8, matched exactly the bet she had made online. But her dream of becoming a millionaire quickly turned into a nightmare: due to a registration error in the digital lottery system, the ticket was not validated, and the R $ million 202 of the main prize never reached the hands of the supposed winner.
The case, which gained national attention on the day 10 May 2025, was revealed by the portal UAI and subsequently echoed by media outlets such as G1 and Post Office from Paraíba, raising an unprecedented discussion about system failures, the responsibility of betting platforms and the legal limits of electronic gambling in the country.
The ticket that was worth a fortune but never officially existed
According to the Metrópoles report (10/05/2025), the businesswoman, who preferred not to have her name disclosed, had placed the bet through the application of a digital lottery platform licensed by Caixa Econômica Federal.
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According to his lawyer, the payment was duly confirmed, and the numbers chosen were exactly the same as those drawn in Mega-Sena contest 2.743: 05, 09, 12, 36, 44 and 60.
However, when she tried to check the ticket after the draw, she noticed that the system indicated the bet as “not completed”.
The platform, in turn, claimed that the payment had not been processed in full before the contest closed, which is why the ticket was not validated in the Caixa system.
"She saw the proof of payment, but the ticket wasn't registered. Hours later, the system had already closed the bets. Even so, the bank confirmation was processed normally," the businesswoman's lawyer explained to the portal. Economic News Brazil (11 / 05 / 2025).
When the dream turns into a legal dispute
The businesswoman then decided to take legal action in the Federal Court of Paraíba, alleging failure to provide service by the betting intermediary company.
The process was filed in the May 13, 2025, and the defense requests that the banking system and the platform operator present transaction records proving that the payment was made within the drawing's operating hours.
According to the initial petition, the amount was debited to 19h48, just two minutes before the official closing of bets, which occurs at 19h50. The company, however, argues that the transaction is only effective after confirmation from Caixa, and that, in this case, the payment was processed at 19h52, that is, two minutes after closing.
The two-minute detail is what separates the businesswoman from a fortune of R $ million 202 — the biggest prize paid out by Mega-Sena up to that point in 2025.
What Caixa and the digital platform say
A CEF, officially responsible for lotteries in Brazil, stated in a note to the portal G1 Paraiba that “there is no record of a valid bet in the customer’s name” and that intermediary platforms operate under a risk contract, being responsible for ensuring that bets are completed within the deadline.
The intermediary company, whose name was also not disclosed for legal reasons, defends itself by claiming that “there was no error in the system, but rather a delay in bank clearing beyond their control”, highlighting that the amount was fully refunded to the customer.
According to the businesswoman's lawyer, however, the refund "does not resolve the moral and patrimonial damage caused", since the symbolic value of the bet was small, but the potential loss was incalculable.
Technical failures and the challenge of online betting
With the growing popularity of digital lotteries, cases like this raise an alarm about the control and transparency of electronic systems. Since 2020, the number of online bets has increased by more than 240% in Brazil, according to data from Caixa itself.
Digital and consumer law experts say the lack of clear protocols for disputes involving system errors or confirmation failures creates a dangerous legal vacuum, in which the player is at a disadvantage.
Lawyer and professor of Law at UnB, José Renato Maia, explained to Paraíba newspaper that “even if there is a technical failure, civil liability may fall on the supplier if the consumer proves that he fulfilled his part”.
“If the payment was made within the deadline, even if the processing occurred seconds later, there are elements to characterize a service failure,” said Maia.
A dispute that could set a national precedent
The action brought by the businesswoman from Paraíba is seen by experts as a possible legal framework for the digital lottery sector.
If the court recognizes that the platform failed, the case could set a precedent for holding intermediaries accountable in similar situations.
"Today, consumers bet on the belief that the transaction occurs in real time, but in practice, there's a time lag between bank authorization and Caixa's registration. This gap is the system's weak point," explains the consumer protection attorney. Clarissa Fontes, in an interview with Economic News Brazil.
Current status of the process
To date, the case is still under analysis by 3rd Federal Court of João Pessoa (PB). In September 2025, the judge in charge determined that Caixa Econômica Federal, the payment issuing bank and the betting platform present the technical logs of transactions and the exact times of registration, to verify that the amount was processed within the regulatory period.
The final decision has not yet been made, but the expectation is that the trial will take place by December 2025Meanwhile, the businesswoman continues to state that she “was lucky to get the numbers right, but unlucky to depend on a system that didn’t work.”
If the request is accepted, it may be the first case in Brazil in which a technical failure in a digital bet results in compensation proportional to the value of the prize — something unprecedented in the history of Mega-Sena.
The problem could easily be solved if the digital platform closed its bets before the official end, like, 30 minutes.
In this case, the customer is not to blame because they placed the bet at the time indicated as valid, and the cashier is not to blame, because the platform did not compute the bet, only making the refund.
However, I doubt the platform will be able to pay a 202 million lawsuit.
In my opinion, the woman will receive, at most, 10% of the total amount.
Online betting ends one hour earlier. So in this case, it's 1 hour early.
She picked the exact numbers no one had played, and the "system" had already chosen them... Can anyone believe these lotteries? Are the balls weighed before the live draws? Are the tables bare? Are the balls passed through an x-ray system to ensure there's nothing metallic inside that could be manipulated by magnets? Has anyone ever seen how magic tricks are performed?
There is this possibility. Have you noticed that only the cumulative jackpot has an excess of winners because it has to come out anyway? The system is the same as the bingo casinos that were banned in Brazil for manipulating results. There is no way to audit them. The auditors present are there just to make up the numbers. They don't even know what really happens.
If her numbers were drawn, it was because the ticket was not entered into the system, if it had entered it would never have been drawn, the lottery system is computed to accumulate or draw predetermined numbers, these government lotteries are the biggest illusion, Jogo do Bixo is more honest, because I have won several times!
👏 👏 👏 …
You literally spoke my mind…
Everything in this country is being manipulated…
You can't trust anything anymore…
I agree with my friend. These lotteries, like electronic voting machines, are all rigged. Total corruption...
Your candidate lost, Mané…
And the biggest **** on the planet won in a suspicious way, how proud you must be of that lol
Intelligence and investigative thinking have unfortunately gone down the drain. Today, what I see most in people's mouths are prefabricated echoes of mass manipulation. Instead of believing fake news, read, study. The freedom of intelligence lies in books and in the lessons history has left us. Especially if you knew Hitler's history, you would have recognized a candidate here who tried to imitate his mass seduction tactics, but here our constitution shielded us from a coup. Get away from the screens that build zombie parrots, and build your own thoughts by reading and building a true intelligence that won't be swayed by the first idiot who uses the name of God and family to deceive a nation of blinders. Understand that there may not even be a right or a left behind the scenes of politics, and that there's a risk of everything being staged among themselves. Well, have you ever considered that there may not be any feuds among them, only among followers manipulated to create the climate they need to try to distort the laws in their favor? No, they're fighting too hard to see the mass manipulation machine. STUDY IT. ESPECIALLY HOW THE MASS MANIPULATION TECHNIQUES THAT HAVE BEEN USED IN WORLD HISTORY WORK.
Brazil is currently in the hands of the worst dictators the world has ever seen, worse than Hitler. Innocent people are being arrested without due process, without formal charges, without the right to a defense, prosecuted as if they had special jurisdiction, while those sentenced to 430 years are free, living in luxury duplex penthouses, and a convicted man, along with his accomplices, is destroying Brazil.
Ahhh… Just a reminder, no amnesty, okay?
I agree. If you play bingo using the same system as Mega, there will always be winners. But there are lotteries. Only on New Year's Eve. There are many winners.