A friend of mine thought of a similar idea once, but hypothetically because he wouldn't want to get in trouble. The idea was to create a community via an app, and this community would target some specific lottery and buy out as many tickets as possible (but not all of them because it's not realistic), and they all don't spend much on the venue individually, but in case the community got the ticket right, the reward is split equally between all participants. So it's not like there's a guarantee of winning, but there's a way higher chance of getting some reward than when one simply buys a lottery ticket.
But nowadays I think such an enterprise would be targeted and outlawed.
your friend must be rich because the possible combination are millions and that will cause him millions for buying all tickets but asking for help is a smart move to do to not all shoulder the payments like what the character did in the story but my question is who held the funds in the group that he created, was it your friend ?
i will not easily trust my funds to random guys if there is no escrow involved but i will maybe if i know the members of this group .