Man won $500K lottery — then realized he forgot winning ticket at the store

This winner wound up empty-handed.

Kevin Frey, a 64-year-old pastor, could have cashed in his winning lottery ticket — but he forgot it inside an Iowa general store.

“I was so excited and flustered that I left the ticket inside of the Casey’s store and went out to the car and started calling everybody, calling my wife at first and everybody else,” Frey told the Iowa Lottery.

Frey bought the ticket at the chain store on North Linn Avenue and won the eighth of 14 top prizes in the “$500,000 Ca$h” scratch game.

The New Hampton, Iowa, resident nearly lost his chance to claim his wealth windfall because of his over-excitement.

After the commotion, Frey only noticed he didn’t have his ticket to endless relaxation when one of his children asked him to send a photo of the winning ticket.

“Then I realized, ‘I don’t have it! It’s in the store!’” Frey said.

“Fortunately, I was still in the parking lot of the Casey’s store, and I ran back inside and asked the employee for the ticket. She was so flustered that she forgot to give it to me the first time. So, we finally got it on the right page.”

The lottery winner, who cashed in on Feb. 20, and his wife Marian plan to use the prize toward long-term plans and to move closer to family in Des Moines.

“This is going to help a lot, Frey told Newsflash. “It will be fun to be able to share some of it with some of our family and some of the charities that we support and have supported for a long time.”

Frey isn’t the only lottery winner who forgot about their winning ticket before.

An Australian recently man panicked after he realized his $1.8 million winning ticket was still inside a pants pocket — during a washing machine spin cycle.

“I forgot to take the ticket out of my trousers and put it in the washing machine,” he admitted about his gaffe. “After five minutes, I realized and stopped the washing machine to grab the ticket; fortunately, it was safe.”