He wasn't a rich man. He needed the $40K that he found in the attic of a home he recently bought, and could have used it to his advantage but instead he did the right thing and returned it to the children of the owner, who died before ever informing his family that he had accumulated this sum over the years in ammo boxes in the attic.
A comment in the Fox News article asked what would have happened to this stash had some New York billionaire hedge fund guy found it? Any guesses?
We all know the culture and honesty of small town America is what made this country great, while the culture of the New York City money crowd has worked to tear us down. Is there any doubt that this money would have disappeared had it not been for the honesty of this Utah man. God bless him.
at least he did not give it to the Dallas police.
Good job!
I bet law enforcement goes after it as asset forfeiture, claiming it was drug money. Give it time.
May God bless him.
Great story! What I don’t understand is, who would keep all that cash in their house....yikes! Hope it was honest money.
Pure honesty tells him that it was not his.
This same article was posted on Democratic Underground.
A number (although not all) of the posters said they would have kept the money.
So far, not a single freeper has said he or she would keep the money.
It’s dangerous to feel superior, but I am glad that the vast majority of freepers try to live according to traditional values.
Dude forgot that no good deed goes unpunished!
He had no ethical obligation to give it up. However, it would be classified "undeniable ascension to wealth" and taxable, usually as income. I wonder if, in our screwed up America, he'd still be on the hook for those taxes!
It wasn't "returned" to its original owner. The presumed owner of the money was dead and apparently left no record of it for his children. Maybe he didn't want them to have it. He wouldn't be the first parent.
You could also argue God wanted this guy to have it.
Finally, if he were really a "goody-goody" he'd have eschewed press and we'd never have known about any of it. Instead it's all "look at me and how great I am."
And before anyone thinks I am touting my own goodness, I cannot claim any of it. It was given to me by the strenuous examples of my grandfathers and my father, all of whom would rather wander naked and desitute in the woods before they took something they didn't earn, much less something they stole (which, make no mistake, it would have been if he had kept it).
I guess it's natural for people to look for glimmers of hope in our fallen world, but you won't find it here, really.
I'd do the same, get on with my day, and be rather perturbed if some newsy bothered me about it.
Go ahead and flame.
In any real estate deal we have ever done there is always a date where the seller has to have all their property removed or it becomes the buyer’s property, so legally he likely could have kept the money. Having said that, I sure think morally he did the right thing. If I was the seller I would have split it with him because I would feel like I should have made sure everything was out of the house that I wanted and would have felt better about just splitting the money if the buyer was willing to return it.