Million-Euro Lottery Ticket Thrown In Trash, Found In Six Tons Of Garbage

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, the old saw goes.

Well, in Italy, it turns out one woman’s trash is … well, it’s also her treasure.

This one is bonkers.

According to the Italian news agency Ansa, the woman in question bought a lottery ticket, and when she checked it in a kiosk, the answer she received was that the ticket was “not payable.”

So she threw it out.

She did not realize it was “not payable” at the kiosk only due to the large amount, as the ticket was for … a million euros.  

So she dumps the ticket, goes home, tells the story to her family. They all realize the million-dollar (well, 1.16 million U.S. dollars) mistake, as they regularly play the winning numbers. 

They rushed back to the store and found the trash was already collected and sent to Bitonto, near Bari in southern Italy’s Puglia region. 

At this point, it appeared all hope was lost.

But the Italians, as it turns out, aren’t so quick to call it a day.

“That was the start of the race to recover it,” said the head of the trash company, Roberto Nicola Toscano. “Luckily it was a Sunday, otherwise the load would have already ended up in landfill.”

Search and rescue

Incredibly, they found the truck that had the garbage — some six tons worth — but another problem arose: They couldn’t legally start sorting through it.

“Once we located the vehicle, another snag arose: It couldn’t be emptied at our facility due to the risk of waste contamination,” said Toscano. “We contacted a company in the Bari area that could enable us to sort through the load, and we started searching in the morning.”

Then the garbage company employees started the arduous process of going through the trash. And two days later … 

“It was inside a torn bag with other damaged tickets. This one was one of the few that was still intact,” Toscano said, adding that he then “touched the lucky ticket in the hope that it might bring us some luck too.”

So he and his team bought a scratch-off, and they won 50 euros.

As for the woman? She was overjoyed, is a million euros richer, paid out the cost of the work to recover the ticket, and is now probably enjoying an espresso somewhere on the Amalfi coast.