Powerball Winner Edwin Castro Spends Millions on Lots Burned in L.A. Wildfires

Newly-minted billionaire Edwin Castro is planning to rebuild in his hometown of Altadena ... spending roughly $10 million to rebuild properties ravaged by the Los Angeles wildfires.

Edwin told The Wall Street Journal he wants to help people looking to settle down ... "This is for a family that wants to move in. Those are the people that need to be looked out for right now."

The $10-million price tag is a drop in the bucket for Edwin ... he won the record $2 billion Powerball jackpot in 2022, on a lottery ticket purchased at Joe's Service Center in Altadena.

But while he can stand to part with a million or two, the lottery winner isn't giving out freebies.

Edwin told WSJ ... "The profit margin doesn't need to be egregious ... But I'm not building these homes just to give them away."

Still, him being a local has given some residents confidence that he's become one of the largest private landowners in town for the right reasons.

"I feel better about him than anybody else, because he's from the area," Joel Bryant, a contractor and longtime local, told the Journal.

Edwin says he wants to build mostly single-family homes and maintain the whimsy of the neighborhood -- something that his own proposed "Willy Wonka-esque personal residence" could definitely help reflect.

Altadena reportedly lost about 9,000 structures in the devastating Eaton Fire in January ... the Palisades Fire destroyed tens of thousands of acres, and thousands of properties, in the Pacific Palisades