Even if she had done the smart thing and piad the contractor a small finder's fee before immediately putting it in a safety deposit box and then never discussing it with anyone except her tax attorney - it looks like she still had $1.9 million in debts.
Say the $186,000 consisted entirely of collectable-quality 1000 dollar bills and she sold them on the collector's market: it would only have amounted to a third of her total debt.
Clearly she hadn't been managing her affairs well before this.
Nah, she should have kept her mouth shut, declared bankruptcy, pretended not to have the notes (no one knew) and had a clean slate with about $300K in the bank.