Do you ever think it would be fun to play the lottery with all of your friends? Or family? Or your coworkers?
Here at the lottery, we’ve had groups as big as 40 people enter and win. They live together, work together, and play together and to top it all—they’ve won the lottery together!
Take a look at five of the best groups to claim their lottery prizes so far:
A tradition of playing the lottery together at family gatherings led to 17 people winning a record Cash 5 jackpot of $1,701,811. “Every time the family gets together, the guys start speculating about jackpots,” Mai Khou Vang from Landis, a spokeswoman for the family, said. The seventeen winners include brothers and sisters, cousins, and extended family. During a family barbecue, they decided to pool their money and get tickets for a June 2017 Cash 5 drawing. “We checked them early the next morning,” Mai Khou said. “That’s when we started calling each other.” Yer Lo of Hickory couldn’t believe it when he found out one of the tickets matched all five numbers. “At first I thought they were playing tricks on me, I can’t believe we actually won.”
Since 1990, Charlie Rush has owned and operated Carpet Discount Warehouse in Charlotte. For years, Charlie and his employees pooled their money to get a Powerball ticket for each of the twice-weekly drawings. Charlie collected the money and bought the tickets. He played special numbers he came up with long ago based on his father’s advice. In June 2015, those numbers won $1 million. “I screamed as loud as I could for my wife,” Rush recalled. “I set the screen down in front of her and said, ‘You see that? That’s a million.’“ A few winners said they would tithe to their church, pay bills, save for the future, and share with family. The group said they planned to keep playing Powerball the same as they have been.
A group of five friends found themselves winners of a third of a Carolina Cash 5 jackpot. Their share was worth $181,279. Five months before the win, Diana Wood began buying tickets on behalf of the group. She purchased 12 $1 Quick Pick tickets for the winning drawing. “We won Friday the 23rd, but didn’t realize we'd won until Christmas morning,” she said. “I was in the middle of baking biscuits on Christmas morning. It was a real excitement.”
An office tradition turned lucky for a group of co-workers at a pharmaceutical company in Morrisville, after they won $2 million in a record-breaking 2016 Powerball drawing. The six have played the Powerball as a group for four years. Every time the jackpot got over $100 million the group would pool their money. “We’ve won smaller prizes, like $5 or $10, but nothing like this” one said. Even though they won, they planned to play the next time the Powerball jackpot reached over $100 million. One winner, Anthony Singson, was shocked when he found out. “There’s no way this could be real. Next thing I know I’m going to wake up and this whole thing will never have happened.”
Dreams of winning the record Mega Millions jackpot led 22 lucky co-workers to a $1 million lottery win. The group saw the $1.5 billion jackpot in an October 2018 drawing and decided at the last minute it would be fun to start an office pool. “I checked the numbers on my phone using the lottery app,” DeCora Bowers said. “I was looking at the numbers and flipping through the tickets. When I got to the last one I couldn’t believe it.” The group split the prize 22 ways and at the end of the day, they each took home over $32,000.
We hope you are looking forward to winning big with your family, friends, and coworkers someday soon. If that day comes, remember to sign the back of your tickets if you do win a prize and store them in a safe place until our claim centers reopen!
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