A resident of Bitonto, southern Italy, successfully recovered a winning lottery ticket worth €1 million ($1.15 million) after inadvertently discarding it in a local trash bin. The incident prompted a frantic, day-long effort by the local waste management company, SANB, to locate the misplaced ticket.
The ordeal began when the woman, whose identity remains private, visited a local retailer on Sunday to check the results of her Saturday lottery entry. The shop's machine displayed a "non-payable" message, which is standard for prizes that exceed the payment limits of smaller retail locations. Misinterpreting the notification as an indication that she had not won, the woman discarded her ticket.
According to Roberto Nicola Toscano, the administrator for SANB, the woman had consistently played the same set of numbers—2, 4, 8, 10, and 51—which were significant to her because they were associated with a loved one. A family member later noticed that the specific combination was a winner and informed her, but by that time, the trash bin containing the ticket had already been collected by a garbage truck.
Upon receiving a panicked call from the winner, SANB moved quickly to trace the route of the collection vehicle. Once they identified and stopped the correct truck, the crew faced the difficult task of sorting through the contents. Combing through collected trash would pose the risk of potentially dangerous material in the waste, so the vehicle was taken to a special site equipped to do the search, Toscano said.
It took the workers one day of "working in conditions that were anything but pleasant" to find the ticket, Toscano told Corriere Della Sera. The team successfully retrieved the ticket, which he noted was "miraculously still in one piece." The winner reportedly broke down in tears when she was informed over the phone that the ticket had been found. While SANB is a public entity and the search costs would typically be absorbed by taxpayers, the woman has pledged to cover all additional expenses incurred during the recovery operation.
