Binned €1m lottery ticket found by waste workers in Italy.

[bitLeap]

An anonymous player disposed of the ticket in a shop in southern Italy. They believed that it was non-payable after checking the number, so he trashed it. When the player returned home, their family reportedly pointed out that their favorite numbers had been drawn. They rushed to the shop together and discovered that the tickets had been thrown away and collected by refuse disposers.

After the player made contact with the refuse company, the bin lorry was located, and luckily its contents were not compacted for disposal. After a two-day search, the winning ticket was reportedly found by a waste worker, with the workers cheering as if they had won the prize themselves.

The lottery winner had signed a declaration promising to cover the search costs. I also hope he gives the waste workers a big tip.



https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62qvll0z94o

This story reminds me of one of the films Lucky man and the Lottery Ticket. The person is still lucky that the ticket was not destroyed or that the one who took it first claimed the victory. Until now I don't really like the lottery, the odds are like 1:1000000, gambling directly is much more reasonable.

[TopTort777]

Person is really lucky, not just because he won and managed to find his ticket, but also because he faces fair workers who found and gave him lottery ticket, instead of hiding it and cashing out themselves. It is really a miracle that waste recycling company put recycling process on pause and allowed to dig in and search for ticket. I think usually waste is stashed in sort facility for a quick sorting, then stored in junkyard, and chances of finding something there are almost zero, especially if you search for a small piece of paper.

[Yablee0]

This story shows that all players should endeavour to check their tickets before throwing them away. Imagine for a fact that the waste workers couldn't find the lottery ticket; it would have been lost forever, and the prize would be gone. Actually, I believe many other gamblers must have done similar things one way or the other, and their own story didn't end as the lucky winner in the story. To be sincere here, the waste workers really deserve at least 10% - 15% of the prize because without them, the gambler and his family wouldn't have seen the ticket anymore, because it's very obvious that they won't search the dirt.

Yes you are correct. The story is quite educative and to make us understand that it's not yet over till is over. Meaning in life we don't need to jump into every single conclusion without looking deep or wait to see how it end. Assuming the the waste guy wanted to deny the fact that he didn't see any tickets or whatever, that would have been final and their is nothing no anyone can do about it. But he wasn't just greedy and decided to admit that he saw it. However, i applaud him (the waste guy) for that because some people might just decide to say they didn't see anything and their is nothing he would have done to claim those funds back.

[Die_empty]

BTW, I hope James Howells reads that news. Anyone here remember or know him? He's the guy who lost a hard drive containing 8,000 BTC [1]. He accidentally threw it into a garbage bag, and the bag was later taken away by a dump truck and dumped in a landfill.

Source:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_buried_in_Newport_landfill

James Howells' missing 8,000 Bitcoin was worth about £597 million as of February 2025. His case was quite unfortunate because he spent so much on legal fees and other administrative charges. Yet he was not permitted to search for the laptop hard drive at the dump site. In this case, the anonymous winner was lucky because the refuse bin had not been disposed of at the dump site. He might be forced to go through a legal process to get approval. The government will be concerned about the environmental hazards if it has been dumped.

[DrBeer]

These things happen - it’s not just science fiction!
One person did something foolish
The situation wasn’t irreversible
Another person turned out to be the solution to the problem
A wonderful ending- you could even write a movie script out of it
For me, the key question is the reward for the person who found and returned that lottery ticket! If the owner of the lottery ticket just "shakes hands" with them, that would be a very petty thing to do...
 

Once in a while, we get a good reason to play the damned lottery. From a situation where you consider yourself to have no atom of luck at all and suddenly, you are making headlines on the news and a motivation to many whom has lost hope on playing the lottery.

Fiction was what came to my mind but,

It’s okay to let it ride and show us the humility of waste workers. They did this individual and the lottery a good service.

Yeah, I’ll agree that it’s possible this is just a clever marketing ploy to drum up interest in the lottery! But it could be based on a true story… At the very least, a story about someone who threw away a lottery ticket
P.S. I play the lottery for no particular reason-I just regularly buy tickets for the state-run lottery. It’s a way to support the government, and it’s still a chance to win

[Localhostspeed]

Those waste workers shouldn't get a tip, but they should get a share of the winnings because they were the ones who helped find the lottery ticket. If the waste workers hadn't been lucky enough to find the lottery ticket, I think that man would have spent more time and perhaps more effort trying to find it, and there's no guarantee that the ticket would ever be found. He should be grateful to those waste workers for being enthusiastic and kind enough to help him find that lottery ticket.

I don't agree with you because this is looking like entitlement and it's bad. The guy won his tickets and the refuse workers did their job by trashing it, he needed their help to help recover the ticket from the dump which they deliver, if there is anything he can do is to pay them their money and if he looks at the way they help him, then he should have them compensated for helping him out but giving them a share is not the right thing, that's like asking for more.

Let's assume he decided to give them some shares from the money, that's a kind thing to do, it will be appreciative of him to give that kind of gesture but if the waste management ask for shares then they are not doing the right thing. The best they can do from their side is to ask for their money, they'd their right but if they get paid some shares, it's also a reserved money because they helped the ticket guy.

[slaman29]

Everytime I read this kind of story I just wonder how people are so careless haha. Same as those Bitcoin wallets, which I guess was like a gamble for a lot of early people. I always keep my tickets (but nowadays I don't buy) and everything's digital now I guess, strange he didn't know his numbers as much as his family did.

Workers deserve 10% minimum!! It's not about deserve or not, it's just good gambling karma

[Samlucky O]

I guess the player has learnt his lesson, this very story entails that we should not just jump into conclusion because o what we heard. No matter how a ticket amount look huge and you think it's unpayable, that  shouldn't make one to dispose it to the bin because miracle happenes when you least expect. Indeed he is lucky that the binned ticket was discovered untampered otherwise he would have regretted all his life for taking that decision. Let this serve as a warning to all gambler not to dispose ticket when result is not out. I guess his the luckiest man in Italy now, congratulations to him.

He should reward the waste management with a reasonable amount for their hardwork in reclaiming his ticket. Because without them the testimony wouldn't be available.

[Sanitough]

-snip-
I think the person who found it could not cash it out anyway because there would still be verification, so he had no choice but to return it.

I honestly never considered that winning a lottery like that would require verification. In theory, someone who finds a ticket worth millions might be tempted to keep it. So, does the finder have no chance of claiming the ticket as their own, even if the original owner has forgotten about it?

He can probably claim and keep the money if no one complains, but this kind of situation has happened before and some cases were even brought to court.

Here are two examples:

Arizona lottery ticket dispute over $12.8 million jackpot
Dispute over a $4 million winning lottery ticket

[Doan9269]

BTW, I hope James Howells reads that news. Anyone here remember or know him? He's the guy who lost a hard drive containing 8,000 BTC [1]. He accidentally threw it into a garbage bag, and the bag was later taken away by a dump truck and dumped in a landfill.

Source:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_buried_in_Newport_landfill

James Howells' missing 8,000 Bitcoin was worth about £597 million as of February 2025. His case was quite unfortunate because he spent so much on legal fees and other administrative charges. Yet he was not permitted to search for the laptop hard drive at the dump site. In this case, the anonymous winner was lucky because the refuse bin had not been disposed of at the dump site. He might be forced to go through a legal process to get approval. The government will be concerned about the environmental hazards if it has been dumped.

This story is still trending as we speak because if I am not mistaken it's already Mark about 12 years ever since the incident happened, there are some mistake we do carelessly without knowing and that is this exact situation that applies to how the harddrive was found missing without knowing, but this Gambler case was an intentional act, because he chose to discard the slip by himself without waiting to see the end of them ticket game he played, giving up without waiting to see the concluding parts is just a negligence that can be avoided, but some people are just kind of quick to actions when it comes to deriving a conclusion about what is not yet concluded.

[Dr.Bitcoin_Strange]

I also hope he gives the waste workers a big tip.

Some sport bettors that usually play at the land based bookies have experienced such situation before, some of them can forget their bet slip in their pocket and end up washing the trousers without remembering to remove the slip. It happened to someone I know, he bet on a parlay and pocket the slip, before he realized that he didn't remove the slip, the trouser has been washed and the slip was destroyed.

 I doubt that the lottery winner is going to give the specific worker that found the ticket any tip, since he already agreed to pay them the searching fee and I guess the amount he will pay them must have already been agreed on.

[Agbamoni]

The lottery winner had signed a declaration promising to cover the search costs. I also hope he gives the waste workers a big tip.

It is not a thing about hope, buddy. The lottery winner has to sign another declaration promising to settle the worker who found the lost ticket. In this world we live in, it is hard to find a faithful and genuine individual who will return a lost ticket worth millions. Species of men like that are truly rare. A tip wouldn't do justice, but appreciating him with a reasonable amount would do. Although it's not madatory but im literally saying what I'll do if I were the one who won the lottery.

[len01]

God gives us luck that will never be given to the wrong person.

This is one of the stories and real life examples showing that when someone is destined to receive a big stroke of luck, they will eventually get it, even if the path to it isn't always easy. Just imagine a lottery ticket that isn't very large being buried in a pile of trash, where it should have been extremely difficult to find, yet somehow it was eventually found. It's one of those incredible moments that reminds us that luck in gambling does exist, although the amount of luck may be different for everyone.