[publius911]

At the hearing, the seven co-workers, and three former employees who participated in the salon's lottery pool, testified each was aware of a "rule" in their system prohibiting the purchaser of the group's tickets to buy personal tickets at the same time.

This part of the story makes no sense, since at the time of the purchase, every ticket is as likely to win as any other.
If the group paid for 50 tickets, and they get copies of them before the drawing, they don't have a legitimate beef.

[kingu]

Details are very few. But it APPEARS that the tickets for the group and the claimed purchase for the individual took place the night of the drawing, and the next day the winner stopped by the hair salon to inform everyone that they didn't win, but she did.

There has been no mention on any online source I can find of the group purchase being distributed prior to the draw.

Without any details, it's really hard to say what happened; anyone can make the claim later that there were rules, and drag former friends and coworkers in to say what the rules were then, but really, I don't see how it much matters.

In any event, the winners here are lawyers and the state - not only did they gain the money through the playing of the lottery, they'll gain through taxing of winnings. I'm sure the lottery's position is: we pay who presents the ticket - most advantageous for the seizure of winnings to put into the black hole of state budget.

As for the winner and the group she played with: I don't see how she walks away with the winnings on this without having distributed copies of the tickets ahead of time. I think the eventual ruling will be: She's the sole winner as far as the lottery and taxes are concerned, and then the remaining money will be split between the members of the group, with lawyers scooping up at least 1/3rd of all winnings. A 9 million dollar win becomes a $120,000 payout for each of the members of the group. Life changing money, but far from anyone’s fantasy at this point.