The masks are off: 39 out of 52 lottery winners recently received their big prize from a welfare lottery ticket, 6.23 million yuan ($0.94 million), at the provincial lottery center in Wuhan, Hubei province.

These winners are from Chibi, a county-level city under Xianning in Hubei, a worker from the center said. Their lottery ticket won the top prize of 5.92 million yuan and a second prize to make the total 6.23 million on Sept 21.

The Chibi group is the largest in Hubei to have ever won on a single ticket.

A winner who did not give his name said they bought the ticket in a group to shoulder the cost of 1,848 yuan with 66 shares. After taxes, each share will bring the buyer more than 70,000 yuan.

The winner said they started to buy the lottery tickets as a pool in May when they were in a WeChat group set up by Fang Hongri, a manager of a lottery-selling station. Fang did not take part in buying the tickets, but helps buyers to keep the tickets and their money.

Fang said that one of his friends offered him a series of numbers for the ticket after checking a chart of recent winning numbers that day. Fang was surprised at the luck. "It is really amazing that series of numbers was the final winner."