Waste workers in southern Italy have pulled off an extraordinary act of honesty, spending hours rummaging through a rubbish lorry to recover a €1 million ($A1.6 million) lottery ticket that its owner had accidentally thrown away — believing she had won nothing at all.
How a Million-Euro Lottery Ticket Ended Up in the Bin
The woman, from the southeastern town of Bitonto, had left her lottery ticket at the outlet where she purchased it after staff there marked it as "not payable." Understandably, she assumed the ticket was worthless and walked away empty-handed.
In reality, the ticket was anything but worthless. According to the head of local waste management company SANB, Roberto Nicola Toscano, the outlet had been unable to pay out the prize because the sum — one million euros — was simply too large to be handed over directly at the counter. The ticket had not been rejected; it had been flagged because of the sheer size of the win.
It was only after the woman arrived home and her family examined the situation more closely that they realised the enormous mistake. By that point, however, the ticket had already been discarded and collected with the rubbish.
The Search That Started Before Dawn
Toscano said his team wasted no time. Workers traced the refuse collection route back to the lottery outlet and located the lorry that had picked up the bin. Staff then spent hours methodically sifting through the lorry's contents at a sorting facility, picking through bags in the hope the ticket had survived.
Their persistence paid off. At around 5.30am, an employee discovered the winning lottery ticket still intact inside a torn bin bag, surrounded by numerous other damaged and discarded lottery tickets.
The ticket was recovered and returned to its relieved owner — a outcome Toscano described in glowing terms.
"There's something wonderful about this story," he said.
The incident has drawn widespread attention as a rare feel-good tale combining an extraordinary stroke of luck with an equally extraordinary act of goodwill. The family's rollercoaster — from assuming they had lost, to nearly losing a fortune in the bin, to finally claiming their prize — captured the imagination of many following the story.
