What Would You Do If You Found a 75-Pound Bag of Cash on the Highway?
See a penny, pick it up — right? What about $5? What about a $100 bill; would you keep it for yourself or try to figure out how to return it?
What if you found an entire sack of cash on the highway?
That’s what happened to Dan Kennedy on a highway outside of Salt Lake City, as Daily Finance reports:
“Approximately 4 feet tall and 2 feet wide, the sack was filled with smaller bags packed with currency including $50 and $100 bills. Kennedy estimated each of the small bags contained $22,000.”
“That’s Something That Happens in the Spy Movies”
How did the 75-pound bag of cash end up on the highway? It was traveling in a Brink’s armored truck, and as the truck went over a “bad bump” on the road, the back latch came open and the bag fell out.
As trooper Brady Zaugg told Deseret News: “Never in all my years have I heard of a bag of money bouncing out of the back of an armored truck. That’s something that happens in the spy movies.”
Would You Return the Money?
For Kennedy, the decision to return the money was easy. First, he tried to catch up to the Brink’s truck that had dropped the bag. When that didn’t work, he took the sack of cash to his work parking lot and notified the police.
As Daily Finance notes, Kennedy never even considered keeping the money for himself.
What about the rest of us? While the temptation to cash in on an enormous windfall might be pretty big, driving away with a 75-pound bag of money could be considered grand larceny. A $5 on the ground is Finder’s Keepers, but a Brink’s bag of cash needs to be returned — and the company probably has a record of every dollar in that bag, so don’t even think about scooping out a few thousand dollars for yourself!
On the other hand, sometimes a good deed can come with a reward of its own. As Utah news site KSL.com reports, Kennedy received $5,000 from Brink’s as a gesture of thanks.
Want to learn more? Read the full story at Daily Finance.
Your Turn: When do you decide to keep money you find on the ground, and when do you try to return it?
