In Italy, a lottery player who accidentally threw away a winning ticket worth €1 million (£857,158) had it found and returned by waste workers. The incident has turned into a story about the luckiest man in the country.
An unnamed player checked his ticket at a shop in Bitonto, southern Italy, and was told it was "non-payable", so he threw it in the trash. However, when relatives pointed out that his usual numbers had been drawn, he realized his mistake.
The incident led to a two-day search, according to Roberto Nicola Toscano, director of the waste collection company. He told Italy's Ansa agency: "This story is nothing short of miraculous."
Toscano explained that the "non-payable" message appears when the prize is too large for the shop to pay out. After the player returned home, he learned that his favorite numbers — 2, 4, 8, 10, and 51 — had been drawn. They all went back to the shop together and discovered that the ticket had been thrown away and collected by one of the operators.
After the player contacted the waste company, the garbage truck was located before its contents were compacted. "Luckily it was a Sunday, otherwise the load would have already ended up in landfill," the boss told TGCOM24. The truck was then taken to a special site where the search began for the "small piece of paper hidden in a mountain of waste".
After a two-day search, the winning ticket was found by a waste worker on Tuesday morning. "It was in a hole-ridden bag along with other damaged tickets: this was one of the few intact ones," Toscano told Ansa. The cost of the recovery operation will be charged to the winner, who had previously agreed to cover the search expenses.
As a joke, Toscano and his colleagues bought a scratch card and won €50 (£43), as if the luck had rubbed off on them.