Italian waste workers recover discarded €1m lottery ticket from mountain of refuse
An anonymous lottery player in southern Italy has successfully retrieved a winning ticket worth €1 million (£857,000) after accidentally discarding the slip into a municipal bin.
The mix-up occurred at a local shop in Bitonto when a ticket scanner displayed a “non-payable” notification.
Unaware that the message indicated a payout exceeding the shop’s cash limit rather than a losing ticket, the player threw the slip into a rubbish bin. Upon returning home, family members pointed out that the player’s chosen numbers, 2, 4, 8, 10, and 51, had indeed been drawn.
After returning to the store, the family discovered that the bin had already been emptied by a municipal collection vehicle operated by local sanitation company SANB.
The owner alerted SANB officials, who tracked down the specific bin lorry before its contents were transferred to a compactor or landfilled.
“This story is nothing short of miraculous,” said Roberto Nicola Toscano, director of SANB, noting that because the incident occurred on a Sunday, the lorry’s contents had not yet been processed.
Sanitation staff escorted the vehicle to a secure facility and spent two days sifting through a massive heap of municipal waste. On Tuesday morning, a refuse worker located the intact winning ticket inside a damaged bag.
The lottery winner, who signed a formal agreement to cover the operational costs of the search effort, will receive the full prize sum following official validation.
