Woman Throws Away Rs 11 Crore Lottery Ticket, Sanitation Workers Recover It After Massive Search in Italy

An Italian woman accidentally discarded a winning €1 million lottery ticket, mistakenly believing it was worthless due to a terminal error message. After realizing her mistake, she contacted the local waste management company. Sanitation workers conducted an extensive search, sifting through a garbage truck for over a day.

What began as a heartbreaking mistake turned into an extraordinary stroke of luck for a woman in Italy after sanitation workers recovered her Rs 11 crore (€1 million) winning lottery ticket from a garbage truck, days after she accidentally threw it away. The remarkable incident unfolded in Bitonto, in Italy's southern Puglia region, and has captured global attention.

The anonymous woman had visited a local shop to check her instant-win lottery ticket after the draw. However, the lottery terminal displayed a "non-payable" message, leading her to believe the ticket had no value. Unaware that the message actually meant the prize exceeded the amount that could be redeemed at the retailer, she discarded the ticket in the shop's bin before heading home, according to a report in BBC.

Later, a family member informed her that her regular numbers — 2, 4, 8, 10 and 51 — had in fact won the top prize. Panicked, she rushed back to the shop, only to discover that the rubbish had already been collected by municipal sanitation workers.

Determined to recover the life-changing ticket, the woman contacted SANB, the local waste management company. Roberto Nicola Toscano, the company's administrator, said the team immediately began retracing the ticket's journey despite believing the chances of finding it were extremely slim.

"We reconstructed the journey of the ticket, without much hope of finding it, as it had already been picked up by a garbage truck."

The correct garbage truck was located and diverted to a specialist waste facility, where sanitation workers spent more than a day searching through heaps of rubbish. Their persistence paid off when they finally located the winning ticket.

"Among them was the stub we were looking for, which was miraculously still in one piece," Toscano said.

When informed that the ticket had been recovered, the woman "cried with emotion," Toscano revealed, adding, "I would have hugged her, but we were on the phone." Since SANB is a public agency, the winner agreed to cover the additional costs of the search operation before claiming her jackpot.