A group of 18 coworkers in Grand Blanc Township, Michigan, has a simple habit: when the Powerball jackpot gets big, they play together. Their club’s representative, Nicholas Stockwell, buys the tickets for the group.
For the drawing of Wednesday, August 20, 2025, Stockwell bought several Powerball tickets at a Speedway station on Perry Road in Grand Blanc. That night he checked them by scanning them. One came back matching all five white balls, 31, 59, 62, 65 and 68, for the $1 million prize.
He sent a text to the group with the news. According to the Michigan Lottery, as reported by CBS News Detroit and ABC12 on December 11, 2025, nobody believed him at first.
What they did
The club claimed the prize with the Michigan Lottery, which announced it in December 2025. The reports describe an even split among the 18 members: $55,555.55 each before tax, with ten cents left over, or about $55,556 apiece as ABC12 put it. Federal withholding of 24 percent and Michigan’s state withholding come off before the members see anything.
The club told the lottery it planned to keep playing. The jackpot was climbing toward $1 billion for the Saturday drawing that week, and they intended to be in it.
What went right
One buyer, one set of tickets. The group did not have five people each buying a few lines for the pool. Stockwell bought, Stockwell held the tickets. There was no second ticket to argue about.
Checked the night of the drawing. Scanning the tickets within hours, rather than finding one in a glove box in November, meant the group knew where it stood before anyone’s memory of who paid in had time to fade.
Told the whole group at once. A text to everyone is a timestamp. Everyone learned the same fact at the same moment, from the same person.
The one lesson for your pool
Notice how the club describes itself: coworkers who play together whenever there is a big jackpot. That is how most office pools work, and it is where most of the risk sits. A pool that forms around each big jackpot has a different roster every time. Who was in for August 20? The people who paid before the ticket was bought, and only those.
In a ShareTheWinning pool, that question is answered before the ticket exists. Each round has a lock time; members mark their payment and the admin confirms it; at the lock, the list of members and shares freezes into a snapshot nobody can edit. The admin records the ticket with a photo before the drawing. On draw night the result arrives in the pool’s own thread, so the “nobody believed me” text comes with the official numbers, the ticket photo and the split already attached.
The members of this club trusted their organizer, and the organizer earned it. A record lets a pool of 18 trust the process even when it is not sure whom to trust.
Read next
You won. The first five things to do. covers the hours after a match, and Office pool rules that stop arguments covers the lock. Our Michigan page lists the state’s claim deadline, tax and publicity rules with their sources. The Journey walks a pool from the latest drawing to a settled round.
