A Dublin work syndicate, named the ‘Rat Pack’, have collected their Lotto Plus 1 top prize of €500,000 from the National Lottery today.
The 12 lucky work colleagues from a business in Dublin each collected almost €42,000 thanks to their winning ticket from the Lotto Plus 1 draw on Saturday, August 12.
The dozen players, who are aged between 28 and 70, have been playing Lotto for almost 30 years and they bought their winning normal play ticket at the Tesco supermarket in Rathmines on Wednesday, August 9.
The syndicate leader said: "Luckily our boss was in the syndicate so he gave us all a half day. The office syndicate has been on-going for almost 30 years but we have never won anything as big as this before.
"We had a tough task on Thursday morning trying to convince the other lads that we had won the half million euro prize. One member of the group in particular was on holidays and we rang him to tell him to get into the office to sign a winning Lotto ticket.
"He was convinced it was just an elaborate prank to get him back into work."
The members of the syndicate have differnt plans for their jackpots.
Their leader said: "It’s truly a fantastic amount to win and share together as a syndicate. Everybody has discussed their own plans for the money whether it is looking after family, house deposits, cars or holidays.
"We’re going to put some money aside for all of our colleagues in work so that they can celebrate properly with us."