Sweet Mega Millions win for 16 lottery players in same Manhattan office

Calling themselves the "Lucky 16 Trust," a group of Manhattan co-workers and regular lottery players hit it big in the $58 million Mega Millions drawing March 24.

Each of the 16 colleagues at the Manhattan office of Ophthotech, a biopharmaceutical firm, is walking away with around $1.65 million net, the New York State Lottery said Thursday.

After learning they had won, some group members adjourned to a conference room "to let the news sink in and to do some jumping around," said Matthew Jung, of Edgewater, N.J., one of the winners.

"There was a lot of energy in that room," he said in a lottery news release. "We told ourselves to focus on work like nothing had happened. But something DID happen, and, to be honest, we didn't accomplish a lot that day."

Playing together mostly since 2010, the group developed an organized system, with each member kicking in $4 a week, rotating ticket-purchasers and stores, as well as requiring copies of tickets be sent to each member, said Evelyn Harrison, company chief operating officer and the group's spokeswoman.

After the drawing, people were abuzz, as news spread that the winning ticket had been sold at Carleton Cards in their building -- One Penn Plaza, said Harrison, of West New York, N.J.

"A few of us decided we should probably check our numbers," she said, and to verify what they were seeing was true, "we went from one person's computer to another's checking each person's scan of the ticket."

The colleagues, one of whom shuttles in from her home in California, will divvy up a one-time cash payment of just over $38.3 million, the lottery said, with plans for the money including investing for retirement and paying off school loans and mortgages.

The other winners are:

Walesca Ayala and Sonia Cruz, the Bronx; Yordak Salermo and Denise Teuber, Manhattan; Samantha Scroxton and Lillian Vazquez, Jersey City; William Barber, Hackensack; Kevin Berth, Hainesport, N.J.; Desiree Beutelspacher, Venice, Calif.; Valerie Chiong, Union City, N.J.; Janice Graboso, New Brunswick, N.J.; Natasha Malik, Long Island City; Harvey Masonson, Accord in Ulster County; Natasha Moore, Brooklyn.