Lotto winner who threw away winning ticket finds it in rubbish

A lottery player who accidentally threw away her winning €1million ticket has miraculously found it following a two-day search through piles of rubbish.

The woman – who wishes to remain anonymous – went to check her lotto numbers at a small store in the town of Bitonto, Puglia, where she was told the ticket was ‘non-payable’. 

Consequently, the woman thought this meant it was worthless and threw it away. However, the message actually meant she had won such a large sum that it could not be paid out by the shop. 

It was only once she returned home that the woman discovered the numbers she always picked – 2, 4, 8, 10, and 51 – had been drawn.

She then rushed back to the store only to be told the rubbish had already been collected along with the winning ticket.

After contacting the local rubbish collection company, a major recovery operation was launched to try and find the ticket – with the woman offering to pay for the search. 

Roberto Nicola Toscano, the administrator of the SANB company in Italy’s southern Puglia region, said: ‘We reconstructed the journey of the ticket, without much hope of finding it, as it had already been picked up by a garbage truck.’

With a stroke of luck they managed to identify the right truck and stopped it.

Pictured: Roberto Nicola Toscano, the administrator of the SANB company in Italy’s southern Puglia region which collects rubbish, who helped in the search for the winning ticket

After a laborious two-day search the ticket was miraculously found in one piece

The next snag in the recovery operation was the risk posed by potentially dangerous material in the waste and so they took the vehicle to a specialist company equipped to carry out the search. 

After a laborious two-day search the ticket was found in one piece.

When Mr Toscano rang to tell the winner they had found it, ‘she cried with emotion’, he said.

‘I would have hugged her, but we were on the phone.’ 

Before returning the ticket to its winner, Mr Toscano told the Italian news channel TGCOM24 that he touched it with the hope it might bring him good fortune.

With a stroke of luck, Mr Toscano then won £42 shortly afterwards on a scratch card.