



The Facebook post, shortly before it hit a million shares. Facebook

A joke Facebook post by a man claiming to have a winning Powerball lottery ticket has been shared over a million times just in the 24 hours since it was posted.

Nolan Daniels posted an image of himself on the social network holding a Powerball ticket Thursday evening. He claimed it was a winning ticket and that if his friends shared the photo, he would give a million dollars to one of them at random. As the post was made public (and remains so as of this writing), it went viral, spreading from Facebook to blogs and various websites.

Even a cursory examination of the photo shows it to be the crudest of manipulations, with the telltale signs of simple copying and pasting to make the numbers appear to be a winning permutation. And those familiar with the rules may also have noticed that the numbers are not printed in numerical order, as they would be on a real ticket.

Despite the ruse being glaringly obvious, the photo — and some folks' hopes for a cut of the dough — has spread like wildfire. At this moment it is at just over a million shares, and is increasing at a rate of over a hundred per second. NBC News has contacted Daniels for comment, and will update this post if we hear back from him.



Curious about the real Powerball winners? You can read about them and watch a video of their introduction here.

Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBC News Digital. His personal website is coldewey.cc.