'How To Win The Lottery' Netflix Recap (Episodes 1-6): Did Jose Luis Get Caught? 

How to Win the Lottery is a 2025 thriller comedy drama show from Mexico streaming on Netflix, telling the story of a bizarre incident where a government employee cheats the lottery system to bag a humongous prize. With six episodes of about 45 minutes each, the series follows the life of Jose Luis Conejera, an honest and morally upright civil servant who has a special knack for numbers and probabilities. Because of this, he rather enjoys his current job as an official responsible for the state-run lottery aimed at helping less fortunate people find a new direction in life, but things take a turn in his own life when he wants to provide the best life for his daughter. Overall, How to Win the Lottery makes for a great watch, which easily makes us support the ‘bad guys,’ despite them wanting to essentially fill their own pockets.

Spoiler Alert

What is the show about?

How to Win the Lottery begins at a local karting track in Mexico City, where Jose Luis Conejera passionately supports his young daughter Karen, who convincingly wins the race by beating all her opponents. Although Karen is loved and supported by her parents in all her endeavors, her father is her biggest fan, and her mother, Laura, can hardly ever make it to her races because of her highly demanding job. Later that evening, Karen asks Jose Luis why he researches so much about the state lottery despite never buying tickets for himself. In fact, Jose Luis is a government employee currently working as a high-ranking official in the lottery department, meaning that he plays a pivotal role in the weekly lottery draws conducted by the Melate company. He now shows Karen extensive research about the lottery winning trends in recent times and states that he does all this only out of a deep love for numbers and statistics.

While making predictions is genuinely something that the protagonist enjoys, there is more to his regular habit of keeping track of the lottery draws. Despite being a hardworking employee who does not question the ways of the workforce, he does have a deep-rooted belief, or complaint, that people like him are hardly ever favored by Lady Luck, and they end up making hardly anything significant monetarily by the end of their careers. He does not want the same to happen for himself and would really like to put his skills with numbers to use someday but cannot yet figure out how to do so. Caught in the struggles and cycles of everyday life, he often ignores exploitative situations at his workplace. But underneath, Jose Luis Conejera always has the desire to completely rip apart his professional expectations and do something daring that would change the course of his life forever. All he needs is a strong enough push, which soon arrives in his personal life.

Why does Jose Luis come up with the plan for the fraud?

As laid bare in the opening minutes of the series, Jose Luis’ teenage daughter, Karen, is a technically gifted racer with a bright future ahead of her. As the owner of the team that she drives in the karting championship for, and also possibly her coach, explains, Karen is far better than all the racers of her age, and with the right exposure, she is bound to make it big in the world of motorsports. Jose Luis naturally wants to support Karen’s wish of becoming a professional racer and being the first female driver in Formula 1, both because of a fatherly instinct to support his daughter and also because of a very strong personal urge as well. Back in his youth, Jose Luis too was a racer, having won multiple karting competitions and then showing his skills in open-seater racing categories. He too had dreamed of becoming an F1 racer and building a career in motorsports, but his passionate aspirations had to be cut short when he suffered a horrific crash on the racing circuit, which left him unable to race anymore. 

But supporting Karen’s career at present is easier said than done, because of the immense funds required to build a career in motorsports, which is simply out of the reach of a middle-class government employee. As the team owner puts it very plainly, he wants to choose Karen to be his driver for an upcoming prestigious competition, which will definitely push her to the next rung of motorsports, but he cannot outright do so because of the steep expenses that need to be borne to even compete in the race. Racers themselves are expected to pay for these expenses, and as he states, there are quite a few rich families already willing to pay the amount to have their far-less talented children be selected for the seat. This is when Jose Luis starts to give the matter a hard thought, as he is really convinced by Karen’s abilities and sees the same racing instinct in her that he once possessed.

Around this time, Jose Luis also starts to realize how the corrupt boss at his workplace, Manuel Tarto, has only been exploiting him and his position, without ever looking to help or benefit him in any situation. When he discusses this with his longtime partner, Laura, she too cannot help but point out how Jose Luis is stuck in a limbo professionally, and his modest earnings have not even let them marry each other, despite being in a relationship for so long and even having a daughter together. On multiple occasions, Laura encourages him to be more proactive in his professional life, making use of the risk-taking instincts that he once had as a racer, and the protagonist finally starts trying to create situations that would benefit him.

He comes up with the idea of the government-funded company that he is currently working with, Pronosticos, starting a support program for female athletes to aid young girls in building their careers in sports. Jose Luis’ plan is to secure funding under this program for his daughter as well by using the fund money to pay for her seat on the team for the next racing competition. All goes well until Tarto suddenly makes a U-turn and rejects the decision, instead wanting to use up the funds to back politicians for the next presidential election. This completely shatters Jose Luis’ sense of morality and righteousness, and he soon makes a grand plan to cheat the lottery system that he has been observing for a long time.

How does Jose Luis convince the others?

But doing so alone is completely impossible, and Jose Luis realizes that he needs a team of loyal and equally desperate workers who will readily partake in the scam. The easiest ones to onboard are the Velasco brothers, Mario and Gilberto, who work as the editors at the studio where the lottery draws are telecast live from. They are simply in search of a better and more luxurious life, which will not have them work for long hours in exchange for meager payments. Mario and Gilberto want to open a VIP club on the beachside along with their cousin, Tito, and so they agree to participate in the scam quite easily. His next target is the presenter of the lottery draws, Lina, who is quite open about her struggles in life, particularly with respect to her evil ex-husband trying to cut her out of her beloved son’s life. Having come to Mexico to become an established actor, Lina is instead stuck in a terrible position, with not enough money to even fight for the custody of her young son.

Lina has already tried the legal recourses to help herself but has only realized that only money can bring about any positive change, and so when Jose Luis offers her way more money than the 500,000 pesos that she needs to reunite with her son, she too immediately agrees to join the group. Lastly, the protagonist has to convince Charly, the man responsible for the safekeeping of the balls used in the lottery draw, and he is the one most difficult to bring in. Charly is a recovered addict who has found new passion in life through religion, and so he outright refuses to partake in any criminal activity and even warns that he will have to report Jose Luis for even suggesting something of the sort. Despite all their best efforts, the four cannot bring Charly onto their side, and their plan would fall flat without him.

Finally, Jose Luis learns how much Charly trusts and abides by the pastor at his church, Jacobo, and decides to try and convince him indirectly. He goes to the extent of burning down the small church, which obviously puts Jacobo out of business and therefore in need of a large sum of money in a very short time. As expected, he obviously tells Charly to get rid of all inhibitions with regard to participating in a lottery scam when the latter tells him about the situation, and this is how Charly finally agrees to join the group. Over the next few weeks, Jose Luis comes up with the grand plan, which would have them play a pre-recorded video during the live TV transmission of the draw, which would ultimately make them millionaires. 

Jose Luis’ exact plan is to have the group enter the recording studio two hours before the official lottery draw and shoot an exact scene of the draw. Charly would bring out the lottery balls and place them in the draw machine, and Lina would preside over the presentation just like she always does, while the Velasco brothers would shoot the scene. The winning numbers from this draw would then be noted down, and Jose Luis would go buy the ticket with the exact number, following which Lina would announce this number sequence out of memory, pretending to be reading out the winning numbers from the official draw. 

Meanwhile, the Velasco brothers would place the pre-recorded video of the winning numbers from the previous draw onto the telecast screen during the official draw, making it seem like the number sequence was selected in the actual draw. Because of the intense nature of the plan, the group needs to practice it numerous times before, and Jose Luis manages such a situation as well by making it seem like the lottery machine can break down during the telecast. Fearing public humiliation before the upcoming elections, Tarto gives him the permission to practice the draw regularly, which makes the group ready for the final day of action.

How does Laura play a significant role in his plan?

Laura first finds out about her partner’s plan when she realizes that he has been secretly putting together a racing team of his own, which would fund Karen’s career from now on. Upon being confronted, Jose Luis tells Laura about his intricate plan, and she delightfully agrees to be his partner-in-crime, as she is fascinated by the thrill of it. Laura plays a crucial role in the execution of the plan on two separate occasions, and it could not have been carried out without her participation. When the official lottery draw takes place, the only two witnesses to the event are an elderly woman who always complains about having to come to work on Sundays and Katy, the state-appointed auditor who ensures that the draw is carried out in a lawful manner. While the elderly woman can be easily distracted and removed from the shooting floor, Katy would obviously catch the scam being executed on the stage, and so it is crucial for Jose Luis to ensure that she does not come to work on this specific day.

Therefore, she gives Laura the responsibility of ramming into Katy’s car while the latter would be driving to the studio, and Laura successfully executes this crucial bit of the plan, leading to Katy calling up Jose Luis and telling him that she will not be able to arrive in time. However, Katy does show up even with a sprained neck, and in order to get her away from the shooting floor, Charly now fakes an accident by intentionally getting his hand cut and has her take him to the infirmary. This ensures that the scam is executed brilliantly, with Lina finally able to memorize the winning numbers and present them during the telecast. The second time Laura comes to Jose Luis’ help is when he decides to finally get his winning ticket cashed in, and as he cannot himself do it, as that would raise suspicions, Laura gets it done for him, delighted to have played a part in the daring scam.

Why does Jose Luis ultimately turn down Tarto’s offer?

Meanwhile, Jose Luis had also received a lucrative offer to leave the lottery department and be involved in the upcoming presidential elections, as Tarto selects him as a trusted employee who should be given the important responsibility. It is Tarto who is called up to oversee the duties of the elections, and he chooses Jose Luis to get promoted along with him, which initially makes the protagonist happy as well. After all, this is a real promotion, which will get him more involved in serious roles in public service, and although being a government employee is not what Jose Luis had dreamed of, he obviously wants to climb up the rungs of the profession that he currently finds himself in. 

But upon further introspection, and also because of the advice that his friends and well-wishers give him, Jose Luis seems to change his mind in the last moment and directly tells Tarto that he no longer wants to play second fiddle to him. The corrupt Tarto had essentially only been using Jose Luis as a pawn to get unlawful acts done for him. When he wanted to divert funds to illegally help politicians get money for the election, Tarto had asked Jose Luis to do it, even going to the extent of asking him to create fake companies and forge documents in order to get things done. But when Jose Luis directly asked for some compensation for the immense risk he was taking, in the form of commissions, Tarto outright denied the request. 

In reality, Jose Luis had already made up his mind about not accompanying Tarto and quitting public service totally, and he had only been waiting for the scam to be successfully pulled off. Therefore, when it indeed leads to success, and Jose Luis gets one-fifth of the 160 million peso lottery prize, he truly does not have to think about his government job anymore. Thus, he announces to Tarto that he will not be accompanying him to the next department, leaving the boss in a terrible fix, and Jose Luis does not hesitate to threaten Tarto as well, stating that he can easily get the boss investigated for his corrupt activities.

Do Jose Luis and his friends get caught?

Ultimately, though, Jose Luis gets caught up in his own habit of making detailed plans of everything, as he decides to get his lottery ticket cashed in the nearby city of Zacatecas. He does so to avoid paying higher taxes and also to ensure that Katy would not find out about it before three or four days, by which time he would have left the office forever. But as Katy had been trying to make an ad film with the winners of all Pronosticos lotteries, she found it quite odd that none of the winners of the last grand prize were willing to show up in public, which was indeed quite unusual. As she personally investigates the matter, she realizes that the winning tickets had all been bought in Mexico City, and she suspects that Tarto must have used insider information to win the lottery for himself.

However, when Katy finally sees a photo of Laura and identifies her as the same woman who had withdrawn the lottery winnings at Zacatecas, she realizes that the colleague she always liked and looked up to, Jose Luis, was the real perpetrator. After failed attempts to make the higher authorities aware of the situation, she leaks the news to the media and also provides evidence to prove her claim. Katy had managed to find a discrepancy in the telecast video, which clearly showed that the zoomed-in footage of the winning numbers during the telecast had been pre-recorded. This ultimately gets the authorities involved, and Jose Luis and his friends do get caught in the end. Only Lina manages to get away, as she had already left Mexico with her son before the police got involved.

Is the show based on a true story?

How to Win the Lottery is indeed based on a true story about an audacious lottery scam that took place in Mexico back in 2012. Employees of the Just Marketing company, which had been given the responsibility of shooting the lottery draws of the Melate y Revancha 2518 grand prize, managed to fake the live telecast of the lottery draw in exactly the same fashion as Jose Luis does with his accomplices in the series. It is unclear whether the government official overseeing the lottery draw, Jesus Villalobos, was also involved in the scam, as it suspiciously took place right after he took control; the Netflix series clearly prefers the idea that the government employee (in this case Jose Luis) was the mastermind behind it all. 

Annie Castillo, the technical and legal coordinator of the lottery, found it suspicious that people related to the Just Marketing employees had claimed the prize money and also that one of the winners had withdrawn the money from Zacatecas. Just like in the show, the fact that Zacatecas charged significantly less tax in case of lottery wins was known only to government employees, suggesting that the winners had used insider information, and Annie’s investigation led to the scam being exposed. Ultimately, the matter was seen as a minor offense by the law, and the fates of the characters created by the makers of How to Win the Lottery are definitely much more dramatic than what actually happened in reality. 

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