It is a Powerball lottery pool that makes your office pool look like a kid’s game. One man, Ryan McGuiness, used Facebook to organize a huge pool for Wednesday’s $1.5 billion dollar drawing.
“We've been working over 12 hours a day on this since Sunday,” McGuiness said. “I'm content with taking home a billion and a half dollars and splitting it with 292 of my friends.”
McGuiness and another friend Shan Krugman are working out the logistics of the pool. Both men can’t believe the response they’ve had. A total of 292 people paid $500 to buy into the pool. That gives them 73,000 lottery tickets to try and win the record-breaking jackpot.
Mo Samhoury, the co-owner of the Metro Market in Ybor City, has been printing the $146,000 worth of tickets since Sunday.
“We still have a business to run. So when other customers come in to by tickets we stop the machine, print their ticket, then go back,” Samhoury said. “We are cranking along. It's exciting.”
McGuiness said this all started with a few people and has grown into something huge.
“It's nice having all of our friends and family in it so we would all be instant millionaires,” McGuiness said.
Krugman said they know the odds of 1 in 292 million are against them, but they believe their odds are better than others.
“I don't want to disappoint a bunch of people, because everyone has the foregone conclusion that they won, which would be a fantastic thing,” Krugman said.
-----
