The previous single-ticket lottery record was held by a player in Jiayuguan, in northwest China's Gansu province, who won 113.8 million yuan in the Dual-colored Ball in November 2007 by spreading a set of numbers over 20 draws.

Members of the public used the popular website, Baidu.com, to allege the record win could be the result of manipulation of the draw. They cited a post dated Sept 21 on the website showing how to win a lottery jackpot of 300 million yuan by playing in an identical way.

The IP address of the anonymous person who lodged the post was also from Henan province, a coincidence that fueled suspicions of fraud.

Another post by an unidentified "insider of China's lottery industry" alleged on the Tianya BBS website on Oct 12 that the "Dual-colored Ball" lottery was used by lottery issuing institutions to "cheat money out of lottery players" as the video of the draw was pre-recorded.

The "insider"  said the lottery issuing agencies could use the two-hour time gap between last-minute sales and the draw to manipulate the results.

The Welfare Lottery's Dual-colored Ball is drawn three times a week: on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. The insider said the lottery issuing agency used a super computer to analyze sales data and the draw team pre-taped several versions of each high-jackpot draw. Higher officials of the lottery issuing agencies then allegedly decided which set to broadcast.

Lottery officials, however, have not commented on the allegation.

Lottery frauds and scandals have been reported in different cities in China over the past five years.

A software-design engineer surnamed Cheng broke into a database of the Welfare Lottery center in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, on June 9 this year in an attempt to win 33 million yuan on the "Dual-colored Ball" lottery.

Employed by a high-tech company contracted with the lottery management center to work on a system upgrade, Cheng hacked into the system and falsified entries for five winning tickets.

Those tickets were among nine that won the top prize in the "Dual-colored Ball" lottery on June 9.  Each ticket was worth roughly 6.6 million yuan.

The management center detected the fraud shortly after it was announced there were nine winning tickets. After an investigation, they concluded the computerized sales system had been hacked and data changed.  They contacted police at 2 am on June 10.

Police assigned specialist on-line crime investigators, who staked out the prize collection center and arrested Cheng on June 12.

Cheng had failed to create actual tickets with the numbers, meaning he could not collect the money.

In 2005, Zhao found that under certain conditions, it was possible to key in a valid number for the Welfare Lottery "3D" system within five minutes of the winning number being declared.

He then "bought" winning tickets and claimed the prizes from two or three lottery machines simultaneously. He also asked neighbors and friends to cash tickets at the Liaoning provincial Welfare Lottery Center for him.

The lottery center discovered the scam at the end of 2006 and reported it to the police, who arrested Zhao in January 2007.

Twelve people were found guilty of manipulating Sports Lottery scratch cards in the northwestern city of Xi'an in 2004 and were given prison terms ranging from six months to 13 years.