A €1 million lottery ticket has been recovered from the trash in Bitonto, Italy. The ticket was found after waste management workers searched through a truck full of rubbish.
The woman who owned the ticket checked it at a local shop on Sunday, but the machine indicated it was 'non-payable.' This message occurred because smaller retailers can only redeem small wins. A family member subsequently informed the woman that her regular numbers had won after she had already discarded the ticket.
Value of the recovered lottery ticket
The winning combination consisted of the numbers 2, 4, 8, 10, and 51, according to the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera. Roberto Nicola Toscano, the administrator of the SANB waste management company, stated the winner always played these same numbers because they were associated with a loved one.
Search operation
SANB, a public waste management company located in Bitonto, outside Bari in the Puglia region, identified the correct lorry and stopped it to search for the ticket. The vehicle was taken to a specialist site equipped to perform the search due to the risk of potentially dangerous material in the waste. The search for the ticket took workers over a day.
As SANB is a public entity, the cost of the search would have been borne by taxpayers. However, the winner promised to 'cover all of the additional costs' incurred by the search, according to Toscano. Toscano added that the woman cried with emotion when she was told the ticket was found.
