An Italian woman won a €1 million lottery jackpot but mistakenly discarded the winning ticket as trash after a local shop's machine showed it as 'non-payable' for big prizes on August 2, 2026 [1, 2, 3]. The ticket had been purchased using a set of numbers she regularly played, associated with a loved one, said SANB company administrator Roberto Nicola Toscano [2].
After a family member informed her the numbers had won, she rushed back to the shop only to find the ticket had already been thrown away and collected by trash [1, 2, 3]. Facing the possibility of losing the prize, she contacted SANB, the regional waste management company in Puglia, to track down the garbage truck that had collected the rubbish [1, 2, 3].
SANB staff located and stopped the trash truck. Because the rubbish might contain hazardous materials, they took it to a professional company for a careful search [1]. They spent over a day combing through the garbage before they miraculously found the ticket still intact. The discovery moved the woman to tears of relief [1, 2, 3]. Toscano said, "If we were face to face, I would definitely give her a hug" [3].
As SANB is a public agency, the costs of the search would normally be covered by taxpayers. However, the woman agreed to pay the additional fees by signing a letter of commitment [1, 3].
The prize amount of €1 million is equivalent to about 1.48 million Singapore dollars, 1.15 million US dollars, or 37.23 million New Taiwan dollars [1, 2, 3]. The woman now plans to claim her winnings after the extraordinary retrieval of her ticket.
On August 2, the woman initially checked the ticket and discarded it due to the shop machine’s error. The same day, she learned the ticket was a winner but found it already discarded with the trash collected. Shortly afterward, she contacted SANB, whose staff’s day-long search recovered the ticket [1, 2, 3].
