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Were there no records of the bet beforehand in the lottery system in the first place? Though idrk how it works so they may not even have that kind of system, or even if they did, they never save stuff in the first place. Anyway, I reckon 200k usd is pretty big once converted into php. It might be a different thing depending on the costs he had though, considering it was a 9 year fight and lawyers are by no means cheap. I reckon they had no choice but to proceed though after a certain point so it just lasted till 9 years. I'd say still worth it though, as I said, it's still a lot of money if you consider the cost of living in the PH.
My mother used to work for a lottery house back then and I think they do have a system that records it so either the lottery teller was bad at her job or that the person behind it was just plain stupid that they've got this problem. 9 years of his life was wasted on this, I think that any sane person would just go for it because that amount money I think is still worth a lot even after all those fees for the case, and we can't forget that he was also a expatriate worker which means that he's got the money at the least in all of this, definitely worth it as you've said I live in the Philippines so I know what you are talking about in terms of cost of living and it's damn expensive especially if you are a breadwinner for the family and you don't really have a big salary for your work.