Million-Euro Lottery Ticket Found in Trash Heap in Italy
A woman in Italy accidentally threw away a winning lottery ticket worth one million euros after checking it at a local shop. Waste management company SAMB traced and found the ticket in a pile of waste, then returned it to its owner.
Waste management company SAMB in the Apulia region of Italy has helped a woman recover a lottery ticket worth one million euros. The company’s administrator, Roberto Nicola Toscano, said the winning ticket was found intact and handed back to its owner.
The woman went to a local shop on Sunday after the draw to check her ticket. The machine displayed the message "not payable," but she did not immediately understand that she had won the big prize. Toscano explained that small shops can only pay out modest winnings. The woman had always played the same set of numbers, which were connected to a person close to her.
When she got home, a family member told her that her numbers had won. When she returned to the shop, the ticket had already been thrown away and the waste collected. She called SAMB, which managed to trace the route of the discarded ticket. Toscano said the company had little hope of finding it, but they were able to identify which garbage truck had picked up the shop’s waste and stopped it in time. Employees spent a whole day checking the waste until they found the winning ticket.
Toscano noted that the company had signed an agreement with the ticket owner before the search, requiring her to cover the additional expenses. Since SAMB is a state-owned enterprise, the costs would otherwise have been paid from taxpayers’ money.
