A player in Bitonto, near Bari, matched all five MillionDay numbers on July 31 for a $1.15 million (€1 million) prize, then threw the ticket out after misreading the receipt. Public waste company SANB stopped the compactor before it reached landfill and found the slip intact at 5:30 a.m. four days later.
Key Takeaways
A Bitonto player matched 2, 4, 8, 10 and 51 for $1.15M, then threw the ticket out.SANB blocked the compactor and sifted six metric tons of waste at an authorized plant.An operator found the ticket intact at 5:30 a.m. on Aug. 4, four days after the draw.The receipt read “non esigibile” – not collectible – which signals only that a prize is too large for the retailer to pay out. The player read it as a losing slip and put it in the dry residual waste.
SANB was told on Sunday, Aug. 2. The company identified the compactor the bag had gone into, blocked the load from reaching landfill, obtained clearances, and moved the waste to an authorized plant on the morning of Aug. 4. Operators sifted it there because SANB’s own facility could not take the load on contamination grounds.
The ticket turned up at 5:30 a.m. “It was in a bag with a hole in it, along with other ruined slips,” Toscano said. “This one was among the few untouched.” He told ANSA the episode had something miraculous about it, describing the player as extremely lucky, then extremely unlucky, then extremely lucky again.
Toscano said he touched the ticket on the way past, in case the luck carried. Afterwards the crew went for coffee and bought a scratch card. It paid $58 (€50).
