Workers searched 6 tons of garbage to recover a $1.16 million lottery ticket

A woman near Bari, in Italy's Puglia region, scanned her lottery ticket at a self-service terminal and got a message saying it was "not payable." She took that to mean the ticket had lost, and threw it away in the garbage at the store.

The ticket was actually a winner worth about $1.16 million (€1,000,000), and the message meant the opposite of what she thought: a prize that size has to be claimed through the lottery offices rather than paid at a terminal. By the time she realized the truth, the garbage had already been collected, according to Italian news agency ANSA.

SANB, the local waste management company, took the case on. "And so, the recovery operation began," director 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."

The company traced the route, located the truck, and kept it from being emptied at the facility to avoid the load being mixed in with other waste. Workers then sifted through more than 6 tons of garbage, and the ticket turned up "miraculously still in one piece." Toscano said the winner, who has stayed anonymous, cried when it was found, and joked that he "touched the lucky ticket in the hope that it might bring us some luck too."

The same confusion happens at American terminals every day, with less dramatic endings. Messages like "file a claim" or "see lottery" mean the machine cannot pay the prize, usually because it is bigger than the retailer is allowed to hand over, and more than one US winner has learned that at the counter. A message you do not understand is a reason to ask, and a ticket you have not verified with the lottery is worth keeping, which also goes for old tickets you find in a drawer. The full claiming process is in how to claim a scratch-off prize.

Sources

Euronews: $1 million lottery ticket recovered among 6 tonnes of rubbish in Italy

AL.com: Garbage workers sift through 6 tons of waste to find $1M lottery ticket