A lottery enthusiast from Italy faced the extraordinary challenge of overcoming near-impossible odds not once, but twice: first, by correctly selecting five winning numbers (with odds at 1 in 3,478,761), and secondly, by retrieving a €1 million ($1.16 million) winning ticket from a landfill after accidentally discarding it.
Garbage collectors in Bitonto, a city nestled in southern Italy’s Puglia region, discovered the MillionDay ticket unharmed amid a staggering six metric tons of trash after successfully locating the truck that picked up refuse from the store where it was carelessly thrown away, as reported by the Italian news agency ANSA.
The fortunate winner, who remains anonymous, had been playing the same numbers for years, as they held sentimental value connected to a loved one.
However, when the ticket was verified at the lottery retailer, the terminal displayed “non pagabile,” translating to “not payable.”
This didn’t indicate that the ticket was a loser, as its holder initially thought. Instead, it meant that the prize was too substantial for the retailer to handle directly. Thus, believing the ticket to be of no value, the player left it behind and returned home.
Realizing their numbers had finally come up, the player’s family later checked the results and quickly rushed back to the store, only to find out that the discarded lottery tickets had already been collected as waste.
By that point, the €1 million ticket was already traveling somewhere in a garbage truck en route to a landfill site.
Urgent Mission to Halt the Compactor
SANB, the company responsible for waste management in Bitonto, retraced the route of the garbage truck, managing to pinpoint the vehicle before its load could be lost in the wider waste disposal system.
The timing was advantageous, as the collection occurred on a Sunday. On a regular weekday, the load may have already been lost within the depths of a landfill.
Due to regulations designed to avoid waste contamination, the truck couldn’t simply be emptied at SANB’s facilities. Instead, the service contacted another site in the Bari area, where workers could securely sift through the contents.
Searching for a Needle in a Haystack
The search concluded around 5:30 a.m. Tuesday when an employee spotted the winning ticket nestled within a tattered bag.
“It was in a bag full of holes along with various other damaged tickets,” stated Roberto Nicola Toscano, the head of the waste management company, to ANSA. Remarkably, the million-euro ticket was one of the few that remained intact.
“This narrative is nothing short of miraculous,” he emphasized.
The workers celebrated the recovery as if they had won a prize themselves, with the ticket eventually returned to its rightful owner, according to multiple Italian media outlets.
The BBC reported that the winner had agreed to cover the expenses incurred during the recovery operation.
After handling the reclaimed ticket, Toscano and several workers paused for coffee and humorously purchased a scratch card, wondering if any of the luck had transferred to them.