A lottery player in Bitonto, southern Italy, accidentally threw away a €1 million (£857,158) winning ticket after being told at a shop that their ticket was "non-payable." The player only realized the mistake when a family member pointed out that the numbers they had played for years—2, 4, 8, 10, and 51—had been drawn.

This discovery triggered a two-day search through a "mountain of waste" collected by a bin lorry. Roberto Nicola Toscano, director of SANB, the local waste collection company, told Italian news agency Ansa that the mix-up occurred because the "non-payable" message appears when the prize is too large to be paid out by the shop.

After the player contacted SANB, the bin lorry was located before its contents were compacted for disposal. The winning ticket was found by a waste worker on Tuesday morning, prompting cheers from the workers as if they had won the prize themselves.

In a lighthearted turn, Toscano and his colleagues bought a scratch card as a joke and won €50 (£43).

Sources

Italy waste workers help winner find €1m lottery ticket - BBC World