Mega Bingo is one of the newest jackpot games in town and today the lucky winner of one hundred and fourteen thousand dollars travelled all the way from Independence Village to claim her prize. She is Shannon Polanco. After purchasing ten tickets, Polanco told Seven News the money couldn't have come at a better time. She told us how she went from being homeless to being thousands of dollars richer:….

Shannon Polanco
"My co-workers specifically a young lady by the name of Pauline was telling everyone in the kitchen, I work at Hamanasi Resort and the young lady was going around the kitchen telling everyone they should purchase the Mega Bingo this week the Jackpot is a hundred and fourteen thousand 'you guys have to play', I never played it before. So Thursday I go to Dangriga at the Esso gas station at the Havana pharmacy and I inquired and the young lady there she I gave her twenty dollars, she gave me ten tickets. That was Thursday, come Saturday we were given news that we, not a shining moment, we were evicted and Saturday night I'm watching television and referring… I am writing down the numbers and I am referring to my tickets because I have ten tickets and I'm going back and fort circling but one specific card was filling up I still had two more numbers to go, but then realize the lady said, we have one more number and I am like, oh no I still have two I am not going to win, but then I look back at the numbers I was writing and I realize I had one of those numbers so I circled them and I am like ok, I just need 063, So she said the final number is 063, I am like Oh my God, I think we won, but I am the only one in the house at that moment, and my husband he finally comes back, and I am like, I think we've won and he is laughing and I am like no it's not funny, I've think we've won the Mega Bingo."

Husband
"When I was at home my girl said get a pen for me and I went by this Chinese and I drank two Guiness and had a feeling that my wife won the Mega Bingo so when I got that feeling, I was thinking about the movie "All about the Benjamin's" and then I felt that is how I going to be, and when I reached home my girl said, I, we won and I said I just laugh and said "fu real" and I said let me see the ticket and I saw we won for real and I felt good about it."

Monica Budden
"Now I mean, that money comes in just handy for you guys. What do you plan to do with it?"

Shannon Polanco
"Definitely build a house in Mango Creek, definitely that's priority then we are going to buy him a boat and the remainder of the money will go into a saving for our son."

Monica Budden
"Now I mean, do you plan on continuing to play mega bingo?"

Shannon Polanco
"Oh, definitely, as soon as all of this is over, we are buying more tickets, I mean who knows, luck might strike twice, who knows."

Joseph Marinan
"Mega Bingo is a great game, great game, we air it live which is really good twice a week for half hour, and we sell throughout the entire country of Belize, its bingo everybody likes bingo. Bingo is the game throughout the whole world everybody knows how to play bingo. The good thing about this game is like seventy percent of the dollars that we take in goes back into this game and we have a progressive jackpot, which we just had someone win on a hundred and fourteen dollars, what happens now is the jackpot starts over on a hundred thousand dollars. There are five different prize levels that you can win in mega bingo. One hundred dollars all the way up to the jackpot, if the jackpot doesn't go you can win five thousand dollars and this is given away everyday game session. So we average probably eighty five thousand dollars every time we play this game, given out prizes, it's a great game, it's a great game for people to play, it's a home game, you can take it home, you can watch TV, you can play with the entry family, of course you have got eighteen years or older, in order to collect or buy the tickets, but the family can enjoy the games together. We give out promotional tickets, so at home anybody can play with promotional tickets; we give out drawing for free t-shirts and everything. We are trying to make it a very popular game, a very fun game, a very entertaining game for anybody that purchase mega bingo tickets."

After a 15% tax deduction- the Polanco family left with ninety six thousand dollars in cash. The mega Bingo jackpot is back at a hundred thousand dollars.

Channel 7

Mega-Bingo has Hopkins woman go from rags to riches

Penny Polanco, a resident of Hopkins Village, walked into the offices of JD Financials Belize, which operates Mega-Bingo, to collect the first grand prize that the company has offered in Belize since it started its operations on December 22, 2010.

Polanco’s story is rather heartwarming as on Saturday morning she had been unceremoniously evicted from her home in Hopkins village and was out on the street. That very day she decided to spend her last 20 dollars to buy ten tickets of the game and was overwhelmed when 24 numbers appeared consecutively on one of her tickets.

The Mega-Bingo’s jackpot stood at $114,000; after taxes Polanco took home $96,920.55. She says she will purchase a home and buy a boat for her husband who is a fisherman. The Mega-Bingo jackpot reverts back to 100 thousand dollars. After every drawing the pot becomes larger if no one wins.

The Guardian