Most Maine Residents Say They Would Give Back a $1 Million Winning Lottery Ticket

Imagine having $1 million dollars in your hand. IN YOUR HAND. A one with SIX ZEROES right after it, right there in your hand. Sounds amazing, right? Pay off your mortgage, your car, maybe help out some family or close friends.

But what if that $1 million in your hand wasn't technically yours? What if you weren't the rightful owner and you knew who was, but no one would know the difference if you kept it for yourself or not, except for you. Would you still keep it or would you give it back to its rightful owner?

It seems like one of those hypothetical moral dilemma situations, but it was reality for a family in Springfield, Massachusetts. According to WWLP, the Shah Family owns a convenience store called Lucky Spot where lottery tickets are sold. A regular customer had, long story short, thrown away a scratch ticket that she thought was a loser, but she failed to realize she left one number unscratched.

When one of the co-owners, Abhi Shah, noticed that, he scratched off the final number, which happened to be a match, and when he scratched off the prize, he revealed that the prize was $1,000,000. Since Abhi and his family knew who the customer was, after calling back to India for some parental advice, they decided to hold onto the ticket until the customer came back in and give it to her.

But it begs the question -- what would Mainers do? Would we be just as generous as the Shah Family was? Because sure, technically the woman purchased the ticket that ended up being a $1 million winner, but she was also the one that assumed it was a losing ticket and threw it in the trash, therefore making it public property and up for grabs.

So, we took to our Facebook page and asked Mainers what they would do in that situation -- would they follow the same path as the Shah Family, or would they keep it since it was thrown out in the trash? And the results are...

...most Mainers are incredible great and moral people. Of all the responses we got, only a few people insinuated that they would keep the ticket and cash it in for themselves (and even then, they didn't ACTUALLY say they would do that, they just commented with responses such as, "Ticket? What ticket?" and "I'm rich!" -- but it seemed more for comedic value.)

Would you follow the same path as the Shah Family and most Mainers or would you keep it for yourself and put it to good use? And if you decided to keep it for yourself, would you be worried about possible karma coming back around to you?