Lottery ticket worth $5.7M sat in oblivious winner's wallet for a month

Oct. 6 (UPI) -- An Oregon man who won $5.7 million from a lottery drawing said his ticket sat forgotten and unchecked in his wallet for over a month.

Christopher Sargent told Oregon Lottery officials he and his wife bought a ticket for the Aug. 24 Megabucks drawing from the Plaid Pantry store in Portland and he "simply forgot about it" after putting the ticket into his wallet.

Sargent said it wasn't until a month later that he was back at Plaid Pantry and remembered the lottery ticket in his wallet. He said he handed the ticket to a clerk to scan.

"The clerk wasn't sure what I'd won but he said, 'It looks like you need to go to Salem,'" Sargent said.

Sargent checked the numbers after he arrived home and discovered he had won the $5.7 million jackpot from the drawing.

"I put it in a baggie and hid [it] behind an Incredible Hulk action figure," Sargent said. "I figured it would be safe there."

Sargent and his wife visited lottery headquarters in Salem to collect their prize more than a month after the drawing.