- Italian garbage workers recovered a €1 million lottery ticket mistakenly thrown into the trash.
- The woman discarded the ticket after misreading a lottery terminal message.
- Waste workers searched through a truckload of refuse before finding the ticket intact.
A team of sanitation workers in southern Italy has recovered a winning lottery ticket worth €1 million after its owner accidentally threw it into a rubbish bin, ending a frantic search that lasted an entire day.
Eko Hot Blog reports that a woman from the city of Bitonto narrowly escaped losing a life-changing lottery prize after mistakenly throwing away her winning ticket before realising she had actually hit the jackpot.
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According to reports, the woman had played her usual Saturday lottery numbers before visiting a local shop on Sunday to check the result.
When she scanned the ticket, the lottery terminal displayed the message “non-payable.” Believing it meant the ticket had not won, she threw it into a nearby rubbish bin.
However, the message actually indicated that the prize was too large to be paid out at the retail outlet.
The mistake was only discovered after a family member recognised that her chosen numbers, 2, 4, 8, 10 and 51, matched the winning combination.
By then, the rubbish bin had already been emptied into a garbage collection truck.
The woman immediately contacted SANB, the local waste management company, prompting an urgent operation to recover the ticket before the waste reached processing facilities.
SANB administrator Roberto Nicola Toscano said the company quickly traced the garbage truck’s route, identified the correct vehicle and diverted it to a specialised facility where workers could safely search through the waste.
“The winner always played the same numbers because they were linked to a loved one,” Toscano explained.
He added that searching through household waste required extra safety precautions, making the operation both difficult and time-consuming.
Sanitation workers spent an entire day sorting through bags of refuse in unpleasant conditions before eventually locating the ticket.
Toscano described the discovery as miraculous, saying the ticket was found “still in one piece.”
The woman reportedly burst into tears when informed by telephone that her winning ticket had been recovered.
Toscano praised the professionalism and dedication of the sanitation workers, noting that the successful recovery would not have been possible without their efforts, careful organisation and a measure of luck.
Although SANB is a public entity and such an operation would normally be funded by taxpayers, Toscano said the woman had promised to cover all the additional costs incurred during the search.
The remarkable recovery has drawn widespread attention in Italy, highlighting both the importance of checking lottery results carefully and the dedication of the sanitation workers who helped save a €1 million fortune.
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