A lottery winner who won a $1.39 million jackpot has been accused by members of his workplace syndicate of stealing the winnings.
Mandeep Singh Maan, from Surrey in British Columbia, claimed prize money totaling $2 million Canadian, approximately $1.39 million American, in August 2022.
At the time he won, he was working as a truck driver for a freight company, where he and four colleagues were all part of a lottery pool.
Maan and his colleagues Balvinder Kaur Nagra, Sukhjinder Singh Sidhu, Binipal Singh Sanghera and Jeevan Pedan would all win tickets in the hope of achieving a big win.
However, when Maan collected his millions, the four were left in the dark until a photo of him holding a check containing his prize money was shared online.
Initially congratulating him, they became suspicious and filed a lawsuit claiming that the winning ticket had been purchased as part of their lottery pool.
They said the profits should be divided among all of them.
But Maan remained adamant that the ticket and jackpot were rightfully his and that he had purchased the ticket without using their combined money.
In a judgment handed down last week by judge Y. Liliane Bantourakis, she sided with Maan.
Mandeep Singh Maan, seen here, claimed prize money totaling $2 million Canadian, approximately $1.39 million American, in August 2022
The filing revealed that the core issue had to do with whether Mann purchased the winning ticket with group money.
Records from the gas station where he bought the ticket show he spent $12 on a number of BC/49 and Lotto 6/49 tickets.
The amount of the transaction was decisive in the decision, with group purchases normally being somewhere between $40 and $50.
The ruling said: ‘I am of the opinion that if Mr Maan had used group money or tickets, or otherwise purchased them for the group, the total amount spent on tickets would probably have been significantly higher.’
The plaintiffs tried to argue that they were entitled to their share of the profits even if he did not use group funds.
They said he violated their agreement with them by not purchasing tickets for the group.
Judge Bantourakis rejected this, ruling that there was no evidence that he had agreed to buy tickets for the group on the date in question or to any ‘binding’ agreement.
She wrote: ‘The fact that the parties purchased lottery tickets together, even if they did so with some regularity, is not sufficient to relieve the plaintiffs of the burden of proving on a balance of probabilities that they entered into a binding oral agreement with the defendant entered into. that would give them a claim on the winning ticket.”
Maan is from Surrey in British Columbia, Canada, as seen here
She continued, “While the plaintiffs may feel they are morally entitled to a share of the profits, they have not established any legal right. Their claim is therefore rejected.’
After his win, Maan said in a statement released through the BC Lottery Corporation: “When I heard I won, I sat in my truck and started shaking.
‘I told my wife and she started crying. She woke up our children and they started crying too – at first they thought something bad had happened!’
He added: “It feels great, I feel very lucky to have won the lottery. It will make things easier to help my kids.”
Speaking to the Vancouver Sun on Monday, he told the newspaper: ‘I’m so relieved now. My family’s reputation was at stake.’