Nice try.
Now why don't we just take that further?
You leave your car in parking lot, you pay for use of the parking lot. Your car is under the protection of the guys that run the parking lot. If someone takes your car from that parking lot, that is theft.
On the other hand, you drop a $50 note on the street, someone comes along and sees it and picks it up, that is NOT theft. If the guy tries to return the money, and the alleged ownder refuses to take the money back, it becomes abandoned property, and the money reverts to the guy that found the money.
Get it?
But you are not giving the $50 back to the owner, you simply called the 1-800 number at the company where he works and are claiming that someone there blew you off.
Your legal obligation is to call it to his attention, not to take it and put it in your pocket.
When this neighborhood was new we had several families from Latin America move in. They came from one of those countries where anything you don't have locked inside your walled hacienda is fair for the taking by any and all passersby.
That's their law. It took some work but I got them turned around before someone shot them. Most folks here are armed to the teeth so there was a real risk.
You sound like you are well-grounded in the doctrines of an alien culture that's not compatible with our Common Law or our statutes and traditions.
BTW, every state has statutes controlling the disposition of abandoned cash and property. Many of them apply TAXES to the problem, so you’d owe the taxes ~ anyone pay the taxes to California (thinking they’re among the places most likely to have a tax on abandoned property).