A family in Bitonto, southern Italy, came close to losing a €1 million lottery ticket because of one deeply unhelpful terminal message. After the receipt was thrown away, local waste workers spent more than 24 hours sorting through rubbish to recover the only document that could keep the prize claim alive.
The ticket holder had played the numbers 2, 4, 8, 10 and 51 in the July 31 MillionDay draw. According to SANB managing director Roberto Nicola Toscano, those numbers had been used for years because they were connected to a deceased loved one. That made the eventual win emotionally significant before anyone even considered the administrative disaster waiting in the bin.
Why was the winning ticket thrown away?
The player took the ticket to a local shop, where the checking machine displayed a “non-payable” message. That did not mean the ticket had lost. It meant the prize was too large for the retailer to handle.
MillionDay prizes above €10,500 must be claimed directly through the lottery concessionaire, according to Italy’s Customs and Monopolies Agency. The ticket holder misunderstood the message, assumed there was no payout and discarded the receipt. The terminal, it turns out, was accurate but not especially gifted at reassurance.
A relative later checked the draw and recognized that all five numbers had matched. By then, the ticket was mixed into the town’s waste collection.
Reports differ over the identity of the winner. BBC and ANSA accounts describe an anonymous individual or family, while Spanish newspaper AS identified the ticket holder as a woman. The original account called the player a man. No public identification has resolved that discrepancy.
How did SANB recover the receipt?
SANB, the company responsible for waste collection in Bitonto, traced the discarded ticket to a specific truck. Because the collection had taken place on a Sunday, the load had not yet been compacted or sent to landfill, leaving a narrow opportunity to search it.
For health and safety reasons, the company did not empty the truck at its regular depot. The rubbish was transferred to a specialist facility, where workers could sort through it under more suitable conditions.
Accounts describe the effort as lasting more than 24 hours, with some reports characterizing it as a two-day operation and BBC and ANSA focusing on the main overnight sorting effort. Before dawn on Tuesday, August 4, workers found the receipt inside a torn rubbish bag among several other damaged lottery tickets.
Crucially, the winning ticket was nearly undamaged. Toscano told ANSA that the recovery had “something miraculous about it.” The workers reportedly celebrated together when they identified the numbers, an understandable response after spending the night examining someone else’s refuse.
The ticket holder had signed a declaration agreeing to cover the costs of the search. Toscano and several colleagues later bought a scratch card for amusement and won €50, which was at least a more efficient return on paper.
Why did the physical ticket matter so much?
Recovering the receipt did not automatically deliver the money. It preserved the family’s ability to make a valid claim.
Under the Customs and Monopolies Agency’s rules, MillionDay winners must present the intact original receipt within 60 days. Photographs, copies and other substitute documentation are not accepted if the paper ticket is lost. Serious damage could also prevent validation.
MillionDay draws five numbers from 1 to 55. Matching all five on a standard five-number entry carries a €1 million top prize, with the statutory 8% withholding applying under Italy’s lottery rules.
No later report located by August 8, 2026, confirms that lottery officials ultimately validated the receipt or paid the prize. The successful rubbish search therefore solved the most immediate problem, but it was not the final step in the claims process.
The episode also placed a substantial sanitation and occupational burden on SANB employees. They had to trace the collection route, isolate an entire truckload and use a specialist facility to search safely for one small piece of paper. The family’s fortune depended not only on luck in the draw, but on workers reaching the waste before machinery made the mistake permanent.
