Teams of rubbish collectors spent two days sifting through waste and rubbish in a bid to find the winning ticket - the administrator leading the effort later revealed he won on a scratch card after rubbing the winning ticket12:17, 06 Aug 2026A woman who accidentally threw away a winning the equivalent of £857,000 on lottery ticket had her prize saved after bin men searched through heaps of rubbish for two days in a bid to find it.‌The winning woman, who wanted to remain anonymous, went to check her lotto numbers at a store in the town of Bitonto, Puglia, in southern Italy, and was told the ticket she had was "non-payable." But she wrongly believed this meant it was worthless and threw it away in the rubbish.‌But it meant she had won a large sum that could not be paid out by the store. When she returned home, the woman learned the numbers she typically picked - 2, 4, 8, 10 and 51 - were part of the winning draw.‌The woman then raced back to the store, but was told the rubbish had been collected with the ticket. She then contacted the local rubbish collection company and a huge recovery effort was launched in a bid to find the ticket.SANB administrator Roberto Nicola Toscano said: "We reconstructed the journey of the ticket, without much hope of finding it, as it had already been picked up by a garbage truck." Fortunately, they were able to identify the right rubbish collection truck and stopped it.‌But the recovery risked exposing people to potentially dangerous material and waste, reports MailOnline. The team then asked a specialist company to carry out the search for the winning ticket.Following an extensive two-day search, the ticket was found intact. When Mr Toscano rang the winner to tell her they found it, "she cried with emotion." He added: "I would have hugged her, but we were on the phone."Before returning the ticket to the winner, Mr Toscano told a local news outlet he touched it in the hope that some good luck would rub off on him. It might have had an effect as he won the equivalent of £42 on a scratch card shortly afterward.‌It comes after reports that a woman who won £30,000 on the Spanish lottery found out she was unable to claim it due to a system introduced in 2011. Carmen, 79, won €35,000 (£30,000) on the ONCE daily draw lottery in August 2025 and went to collect her winnings.But she found out that she was unable to due to the General Register of Gambling Access Bans, which allows people to ban themselves from taking part in gambling. It was upon her attempt to collect her winnings that she found out she was on the list, but she didn't recall ever registering.She then found out that her late husband had registered her on the service himself before his death - secretly forging his wife's signature and sending a burofax to the Directorate General for the Regulation of Gambling from a local post office in January 2012. The letter he sent had been written as though Carmen had a serious gambling-related issue, allowing her husband to apply on her behalf.Article continues belowCarmen is now trying to have her name removed, but ONCE, which runs the lottery, said that while it would like to give Carmen her winnings, it can't under Spanish law unless her entry in the register is "officially or judicially annulled". Carmen's daughter believes that her late father put her mother on the register as he didn't like how often she went to bingo."My father was a disaster of a husand," she said. "He had a sexist mindset and didn't like my mum going to bingo at the community centre with her friends, because he was left alone at home. They had a heated argument over that."Carmen's case is currently before the High Court of Justice of Madrid. Her solicitor is reportedly tyrying to secure an automatic annulment of her entry on the register so she can finally claim her prize.