A woman in Bitonto, Italy, discarded a €1 million lottery ticket after misinterpreting a "non-payable" message received when checking her ticket at a local shop on August 9, 2026, as meaning she had won no prize [1, 2]. She had purchased the ticket the previous day and consistently played the same six numbers: 2, 4, 8, 10, 51 [1, 3, 2].
After realizing her error, she contacted the local waste management company SANB to help find the ticket [1, 3]. SANB administrator Roberto Nicola Toscano said they were able to identify and stop the correct garbage truck and then spent two days searching through tons of trash at a specialized facility to locate the ticket intact [1, 3, 2]. Toscano described the ticket as found "miraculously still in one piece," noting the emotional moment when the woman cried upon hearing the news by phone [1].
The woman promised to cover the additional costs of the search operation, which speaks to the complexity and effort involved in the retrieval [1, 3]. Following the recovery, Toscano bought a scratch ticket and won €50 (about $56), calling it a small lucky prize for the team [3, 2].
The ticket recovery highlights the persistence of the waste workers and the coordination needed to track waste disposal routes and recover a fragile lottery ticket. The search operation lasted two days, underscoring the scale of the task once the correct truck was located [3, 2].
