A lottery player in Italy has won twice over after throwing away a €1 million winning ticket and then finding it again. The anonymous player had bought the ticket at a shop in Bitonto, in the southern region of Puglia, and discarded it believing it was worthless.
In reality, the ticket had hit the jackpot, but due to a misunderstanding, the player threw it away. However, the player had second thoughts after a relative pointed out that the numbers they always picked—2, 4, 8, 10 and 51—were the winning combination, as reported by the BBC.
Tracking Down the Ticket
The winner traced the ticket to a lorry that had taken it to a waste site. Waste workers then spent two days trawling through a huge rubbish heap before miraculously striking gold.
The shop where the ticket was bought had told the player it was 'non-payable'. While they thought that meant no prize, it actually meant the winnings were too large for the shop to process.
A Stroke of Luck
In another stroke of good fortune, the rubbish had not yet been taken to landfill because it was a Sunday. It took until Tuesday for a worker to finally find the piece of paper among the mountain of waste.
Nicola Roberto Toscano, head of waste management firm North Bari Environmental Services (SANB), said the card was found with other discarded tickets in a plastic bag. He explained: 'Luckily it was a Sunday, otherwise the load would have already ended up in landfill.'
Mr Toscano and his colleagues bought a scratch card to celebrate and won £50. He wrote on Facebook: 'It is often said that waste can be a resource. Well.. there are those that have decided to take this so literally.'
Cost of Recovery
Despite becoming a millionaire overnight, the winner will now have to pay for the cost of recovering the ticket. In the UK, winning Lotto tickets go unclaimed each year; last week, the National Lottery appealed for winners of two £1,000,000 Lotto tickets played in Cheshire East and Tameside.
