TALLAHASSEE — The Florida Lottery announced today that Florida Lotto winner John Baldini, 50, Estero, claimed his share of the $5 million Florida Lotto jackpot from the drawing held on October 16. The other winning ticket, purchased in Cape Canaveral, was claimed by the Amador R. Jamito Jr. Trust.

Baldini chose the one-time, lump-sum payment for his winnings in the amount of $1,555,294.57. The winning Florida Lotto ticket was purchased at Publix, located at 21301 S. Tamiami Trail in Estero. The retailer received a bonus incentive of $10,000 for selling the jackpot-winning ticket.

The winning lotto numbers were 07-08-09-12-13-25 and the XTRA multiplier was 5.

Baldini says he regularly purchases Lotto and Fantadsy 5 tickets from Publix, but because the store is often busy and filled with customers, he waits until he has a number of Lottery tickets to be checked and uses the Express Check machine to determine if his tickets are winners. This past Saturday, he was at the store checking a handful of tickets, and discovered he was holding one of the two jackpot-winning tickets from the October 16 Florida Lotto drawing. The numbers on the winning ticket are a combination of family birthdays he routinely plays.

Total ticket sales for this jackpot generated more than $3.9 million for the Educational Enhancement Trust Fund (EETF). Since 1988, the Florida Lottery has contributed more than $21 billion to the EETF, benefiting our students and schools, as well as funding more than one million Bright Futures scholarships. By a two-to-one margin, Florida voters in 1986 approved a constitutional amendment authorizing the state to operate a lottery for the purpose of generating significant additional moneys for education.

Baldini is the 35th Florida Lotto jackpot winner to purchase a winning ticket in Lee County. To date, there have been more than 950 Lotto jackpot winners statewide since 1988.

The next Lotto drawing will be held on Wednesday, December 8 at 11:15 p.m. with a $13 million jackpot.