Lucky Find: Million-Euro Ticket Salvaged from Italian Waste Heap
Poinews.com – After a frantic two-day effort, a lottery ticket worth one million euros was successfully retrieved from a mountain of garbage in Bitonto, a town situated close to Bari in the Puglia area of southern Italy. The remarkable discovery was made on Tuesday, with the ticket remaining completely undamaged despite being buried among six tonnes of refuse.
A Case of Mistaken Disposal
The anonymous prize winner had carelessly tossed the ticket into a bin at a neighborhood tobacconist shop. This happened after a self-service lottery machine displayed a “not payable” notification. Under standard lottery regulations, shop retailers are permitted to settle only minor prizes on the spot. When tickets represent larger winnings, they carry this “not payable” designation and must be claimed through an alternative procedure.
“That was the start of the race to recover it,” Toscano said.
According to Roberto Nicola Toscano, who serves as director of Sanb—the regional waste management firm—the player eventually understood the situation upon arriving home. A family member happened to notice the winning number combination, which they regularly played. The household immediately hurried back to the shop, but the discarded tickets had already been collected by a garbage truck.
The Recovery Mission
Following contact from the family, Sanb personnel managed to pinpoint the exact vehicle and halted it before the contents were crushed into a compactor. “Once we located the compactor, we isolated it and placed it under armed guard,” Toscano explained to TgCom24.
Search teams then began combing through the enormous pile of waste. Around 5:30 in the morning, a worker finally spotted the elusive ticket. “It was inside a torn bag with other damaged tickets. This one was one of the few that was still intact,” Toscano recounted. He also mentioned that he “touched the lucky ticket in the hope that it might bring us some luck too.”
“The team and I stopped for a coffee and, just for fun, bought a scratchcard,” he said. “We ended up winning €50.”
Toscano shared that the family had previously agreed to cover any extra costs associated with the recovery effort. The expenses incurred during the operation will now be charged to the winner. The director even noted a serendipitous moment during the search: “The team and I stopped for a coffee and, just for fun, bought a scratchcard,” he said. “We ended up winning €50.”
The entire episode was relayed to the Italian news agency ANSA by Toscano, who oversaw the successful retrieval of what many consider a truly fortunate find.
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