Italian woman throws away lottery ticket worth one million euros – and gets it back from the trash

Why the ticket was noticed at all

Once it became clear that the ticket had made its way from household trash into a garbage bin and ultimately into a truck belonging to the waste management company SANB, the company launched a search operation. According to the information provided, the valuable ticket was actually recovered from the waste stream before it ended up in a garbage compactor. Italian media wrote verbatim: "Una vincita da un milione di euro rischiava di finire per sempre in un compattatore dei rifiuti. È successo a Bitonto, nel Barese".

Exactly how the woman was able to trace the path of her ticket is not clear from the available reports. In Italy, however, winnings above a certain threshold are usually submitted centrally to the lottery company; the participating retailer takes receipt of the ticket and forwards it, which is why it is documented at all that a winning ticket is in circulation.

Search in the waste stream

Toscano spoke of an extraordinary incident that occurs only very rarely in the region. He took the opportunity to point to the work of the municipal waste management service, which is responsible for the collection and processing of household waste in Apulia. SANB is one of the municipal utility companies active in several cities in Apulia.

The story is reminiscent of similar incidents in other countries, where winning tickets were lost and sometimes recovered with the help of waste management companies or tips from the public. In Italy in recent years, it was primarily cases in which gambling addiction had led to heavy losses that attracted attention; a mild outcome like the one in Bitonto is the exception.

For the woman affected, the find means above all one thing: she can now claim her winnings after all. How the Italian lottery company, based in Rome, will handle the case further and whether additional steps are necessary, such as identity verification or an extension of the deadline, was not known as of Wednesday.

Reactions in Italy

The incident has triggered a broad debate in Italy about the careful handling of lottery tickets. Experts advise always keeping scratch-off tickets in a fixed place and having the winnings checked promptly by the retailer or the lottery company, rather than carelessly discarding them.

Toscano emphasized to AFP that his company is not routinely tasked with searching for valuables in the trash. However, in this case they had acted quickly because there had been a concrete tip regarding the item of value and the district of the city affected.

It initially remained unclear whether the woman from Bitonto had appeared publicly. Local media merely reported that she had reported the incident herself after realizing that she had been in possession of a ticket worth millions.