After two days of searching, a winning €1 million lottery ticket that had been mistakenly thrown away was recovered intact amid six tonnes of rubbish on Tuesday in Bitonto, near Bari in southern Italy's Puglia region.
Roberto Nicola Toscano, the director of Sanb, a company responsible for waste collection in the region, told the story to the Italian news agency ANSA.
The anonymous winner had discarded the ticket at a local tobacconist after a self-service lottery terminal displayed the message "not payable."
Under the rules of the lottery, retailers can only pay out smaller prizes directly. Larger winnings must be claimed through a different process, so winning tickets for substantial amounts are marked "not payable" at the shop.
According to Toscano, the player realised what had happened after they returned home, when a relative recognised the winning sequence of numbers, a combination they always played.
