Joseph William Coyle (February 26, 1953 – August 15, 1993) was an unemployed longshoreman in Philadelphia who, in February 1981, found $1.2 million in the street, after it had fallen out of the back of an armored car, and kept it. His story was made into the 1993 film Money for Nothing, starring John Cusack, as well as a 2002 book by Mark Bowden, Finders Keepers: The Story of a Man Who Found $1 Million.
Coyle passed out some of the money, in $100 bills, to friends and neighbors. He was arrested later in 1981 at JFK Airport while trying to check into a flight to Acapulco; police found $105,000 of the cash in envelopes taped around his ankles. He was tried, but found not guilty of theft by reason of temporary insanity. The armored car company, Purolator Armored Services, eventually recovered around $1 million of the original amount.
I remember it well. Died at age 40? I had lost track of his story by then. What happened?