Office Lottery Pool Disputes: Coworkers Who Sued Each Other

An office lottery pool looks harmless right up until the ticket hits — and then, in a handful of well-documented American cases, the people who bought lunch together for years ended up on opposite sides of a courtroom. The short answer to what happens next: courts have repeatedly treated these informal pools as real, enforceable agreements, even when nothing was ever written down. Juries and judges have ordered winners to split money they insisted was theirs alone.

The most complete example on record is the New Jersey construction crew that sued a co-worker over a $38.5 million Mega Millions jackpot and won a unanimous jury verdict in 2012. But it is not the only one. An Illinois bakery office lottery pool spent roughly three years in litigation over a $118 million prize. An Ohio man sued over a $99 million win he was left out of while home with a back injury.

Indiana salon workers took a colleague to court and got a judge to freeze the money before it was paid.

What follows is what actually happened in those cases, drawn from news reporting and court proceedings — including the part most readers care about, which is how each one ended and what the people involved walked away with. None of this is legal or tax advice, and every office lottery pool dispute turns on its own facts.

The office lottery pool that ended in a New Jersey jury verdict

Five men who worked at Berto Construction Inc. in Elizabeth, New Jersey, had been playing the lottery together since 2007, according to reporting by CNN and CBS News. One of the group, Americo Lopes, bought tickets for the pool. In November 2009, a Mega Millions ticket he was holding hit a $38.5 million jackpot.

Lopes did not tell the group. As the Associated Press and CBS News reported, he instead told his boss he would not be coming back to work because he needed foot surgery — surgery he never had. He claimed the winning ticket was a personal one he bought separately, not part of the pool.

The unraveling came from a date. One of the regular players, Candido Silva Sr., found the drawing date of Lopes’ win online and matched it to a date the group had pooled money for tickets, according to news accounts of the trial. The five men sued in state Superior Court in Elizabeth.

What happened after the verdict

In March 2012, a jury reached a unanimous verdict rejecting Lopes’ account and finding he had cheated his co-workers out of their shares, as reported by CNN, Fox News and NBC News. Because Lopes had taken the cash option, the $38.5 million annuity prize was worth about $24 million up front.

The five plaintiffs were each awarded roughly $4 million. That is the outcome people usually miss: the money did not simply vanish into legal fees, and the pool members were made whole through the courts more than two years after the drawing. Lopes kept a share as well, since he had been a genuine member of the pool.

The case is now cited routinely by employment law writers — including the Ohio Employer Law Blog and the Society for Human Resource Management — as the clearest proof that a handshake pool can be enforced like a contract.

The bakery pool that eventually split 18 ways

In 2012, a group of workers at Pita Pan Old World Bakery in Chicago Heights, Illinois, who called themselves the Dirty Dozen, matched the numbers on a $118 million Mega Millions ticket. ABC News and Chicago television stations covered what happened next.

Eleven other employees came forward saying they were owed a cut. Their argument was specific: they had contributed to an earlier May 1 drawing, and money from those tickets had been rolled into tickets for the May 4 drawing that won. The Illinois Lottery held the payout while the claims were sorted out, as ABC7 Chicago reported at the time.

The litigation ran about three years. It ended in a settlement rather than a verdict: each of the original twelve received roughly $6 million, and six additional employees split about $13.8 million. Eighteen people were paid from a prize twelve had claimed.

When an office lottery pool argument starts over $15

Not every case involves an accusation of concealment. In Youngstown, Ohio, Edward Hairston sued co-workers at a cabinet company after their pool matched all six numbers in an August 2011 drawing worth about $99 million, according to ABC News.

Hairston said he had played in the pool for roughly eight years and was out for about three months with a back injury when the winning ticket was bought. His position, argued by attorney Howard Mishkind, was that the group had an implied understanding that members covered for each other during illness or vacation. Mishkind put the stakes bluntly in remarks to ABC News: a missed contribution of about $15 was the difference in roughly $2 million.

The suit was settled out of court for an amount that was not made public. An office lottery pool that never wrote down an absence rule left a judge or jury to decide what everyone had silently assumed.

The salon ticket a judge froze before payout

In February 2013, seven stylists at Lou’s Creative Styles in Indianapolis went to court over a $9.5 million Hoosier Lotto jackpot. As NBC News and the Indianapolis Star reported, the group regularly chipped in $5 each, and one stylist was sent to a gas station to buy the tickets.

She reportedly bought tickets for herself at the same stop — something the group said their own understanding forbade — and later told her colleagues that the winning ticket was her personal one, not the pool’s. Her co-workers disputed that.

Marion County Superior Court Judge Heather A. Welch placed a hold on the jackpot while she heard testimony, which meant no one collected while the ownership question was open. That hold is worth noting on its own: an unresolved office lottery pool claim can stop a payout before a single dollar moves.

How the IRS handles a jackpot with more than one owner

The federal government already assumes shared tickets exist. The IRS publishes Form 5754, “Statement by Person(s) Receiving Gambling Winnings,” which is used when the person who physically collects a prize is not the sole owner of it — including members of a group sharing one winning ticket.

Per the IRS instructions for Forms W-2G and 5754, Part I identifies the person who received the winnings, and Part II lists each actual owner along with their share. The payer then uses that information to issue the W-2G forms. State lotteries have their own group-claim procedures on top of that, and how any individual’s taxes work out depends on their own situation — the IRS and the state lottery are the authorities on a specific case.

What winners can learn from these office lottery pool cases

The factual pattern across all four disputes is consistent. In every case, the pool operated informally, the members disagreed later about who was in and on what terms, and the disagreement was resolved by a court or a settlement rather than by the group itself.

Second, the money moved slowly. The New Jersey verdict came more than two years after the drawing. The Illinois settlement took about three years. The Indiana jackpot was frozen by court order before anyone was paid.

Third, the written record mattered more than the friendship. Where the terms of an office lottery pool were never recorded — who was covered while absent, whether the buyer could purchase personal tickets on the same trip — that gap became the entire lawsuit. Lawyers and HR writers covering these cases have made the same observation, and it is the one thread every documented case shares.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is a verbal office lottery pool agreement legally enforceable?

Courts have enforced them. The 2012 New Jersey jury found for five co-workers who had no written contract, and other pools have settled rather than test the question at trial. Enforceability depends on state law and the evidence in each case, so it is a question for a licensed attorney in your state.

Can a lottery hold the money while a dispute is pending?

Yes. In the Illinois bakery case the lottery held the $118 million payout while competing claims were raised, and in Indiana a judge placed a hold on the $9.5 million prize during testimony. Procedures vary by state lottery.

How does the IRS treat a jackpot split among an office lottery pool?

The IRS provides Form 5754 for situations where one person receives winnings that belong to a group. The form identifies each actual owner and their share so W-2G forms can be issued correctly. Individual tax outcomes depend on your circumstances — contact the IRS or a tax professional.

Did the co-workers in these cases actually get paid?

In the reported outcomes, yes. The five New Jersey plaintiffs were each awarded about $4 million. The Illinois settlement paid the original twelve about $6 million each and six additional workers a shared $13.8 million. The Ohio case settled for a confidential amount.

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Content last reviewed August 2026. If you notice outdated information, please contact us.

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