A German man has won 15.3 million euros ($18 million) in the lottery after discovering a forgotten ticket in his coat pocket six months after he bought it.<\/p>\n
The father from the Frankfurt area had remained oblivious to his winnings all spring and summer despite a poster campaign to find him, the Lotto Hessen company said Monday.<\/p>\n
But with the weather turning chilly in Germany, the man reached for a jacket he had not worn since March — to discover the ticket in his pocket.<\/p>\n
“It wasn’t until the weekend that I found the ticket again, folded up in the inside pocket of my jacket,” the unidentified man was quoted as saying in a statement by Lotto Hessen.<\/p>\n
“When I checked the numbers on my phone and saw the winning amount, I was completely shocked \u2013- luckily I was sitting down, otherwise my knees would have given way.”<\/p>\n
The man had even heard about the campaign to find the lucky winner.<\/p>\n
“I heard about it on the radio at the time and thought to myself, ‘How stupid can you be not to collect it?'”, he said. “It never occurred to me that I could be the person they were looking for.”<\/p>\n
When asked what he was planning to do with his winnings, the man said he would first buy a new living room sofa.<\/p>\n
Beyond that, he and his wife were planning to use the bulk of the money to provide for their children, he said.<\/p>\n
Both have sworn not to tell anyone else about their win.<\/p>\n
fec\/fz\/rmb<\/p>\n
\u00a9 Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A German man has won 15.3 million euros ($18 million) in the lottery after discovering a forgotten ticket in his coat pocket six months after he bought it. The father from the Frankfurt area had remained oblivious to his winnings all spring and summer despite a poster campaign to find him, the Lotto Hessen company […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":11872,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"subtitle":"","format":"standard","override":[{"template":"7","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"left-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"topbottom","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"1","show_post_related":"0","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"jnews_post_split":{"post_split":[{"template":"1","tag":"h2","numbering":"asc","mode":"normal","first":"0","enable_toc":"0","toc_type":"normal"}]},"footnotes":""},"categories":[198],"tags":[248,241,457],"class_list":["post-11871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-miscellaneous","tag-germany","tag-lifestyle","tag-lottery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}