Nolan Daniels: Powerball Lottery Winner or Facebook Hoax?

Wednesday night's Powerball lottery jackpot—$587.5 million—was the largest in in the game's history.

Now a random guy on Facebook says he is a winner, and that he'll give a random person $1 million of it.

Nolan Daniels is becoming quite famous on Facebook, but is it all a hoax? Or is he really one of the winners?

Here's what we know: At about 8 p.m. CST on Thursday, Nov. 29, Nolan Daniels (and that's all we know about him—his name) posted the following photo on his Facebook page:

Alongside the photo, Daniels wrote:

"Looks like I won't be going to work EVER!!!! Share this photo and I will give a random person 1 million dollars!"

Wednesday’s record $588 million Powerball jackpot saw two winning tickets—the first has been claimed by Mark and Cindy hill of Dearborne, Missouri. The identity of the other winner, whom officials say lives in Arizona, has not yet been revealed.

The photo is the only one publically visible on the "Nolan Daniels" Facebook account, which dates to 2008.

The numbers shown seem to be 5-23-16-22-29-Powerball 6, which are, indeed, the winning numbers.

Danials set in motion a frenzy Friday as thousands of Facebook users got in on the action. 424,164 people had shared the photo as of 4:30 p.m. CST.

Is Daniels bluffing? Is it a hoax? If so, what does "Nolan Daniels" (if that really is his name) stand to gain by lying?

Over on Yahoo Answers, one user named "Clary" is being rated for the most helpful answer to the mystery. Clary wrote: "The ticket is also not a standard PB ticket. FAKE and Photoshopped. Powerball numbers are printed from least to greatest, left to right. Had this been a legitimate ticket, the numbers would have read '5 16 22 23 29 - 6'. The '16' is was a '46' that was altered, and the '5' was most likey a '55'. The powerball '6' looks to be altered as well."

She may be on to something, if you look at how the numbers are really printed (according to the official Powerball site).

 "Anyone who doubts the legitimacy of this photo will not be included in the 1 million dollar drawing,” Daniels replied to skeptics commenting on the photo, which has gone quite viral.

Another commentor on the photo (either a friend or co-conspitor) wrote: "Nolan and I are hammered and just ordered a bottle of Dom bitches! Thinking about hitting Vegas this weekend baby! I'm calling in sick to work tomorrow. Wonder who's going to get the random mil?"

As the Powerball amount grew this week, tickets were selling at a rate of 130,000 a minute.

6:30 p.m. CST EDIT: Looks like it's aconfirmed hoax. Oh well. Thank you for playing!