What Would You Do If……
Written by: Kim Sawyer
You found $97,000, in crisp $1,000 bills, in a restaurant bathroom stall? This is supposedly what happened to a 75-year-old woman in Tennessee. Here’s the actual article:
“A Murfreesboro, TN, woman says she returned $97,000 she claims to have found in a Cracker Barrel restroom, but police said Tuesday they have no report of the find. Billie Watts, 75, told The Daily News Journal that she discovered the money inside a tapestry bag hanging from a hook on a stall door last Thursday. But five days later, the money and its anonymous owner remain something of a mystery in the community, where police said that they have no report of the find. While digging through the bag to figure out its owner, Watts says she found a bundle of neatly stacked $1,000 bills. Watts said she and her husband took the money home, but later called the restaurant back and asked if there was a lost-and-found department. She was told yes, and left her number. A woman called about 15 minutes later and verified she was the owner by identifying pictures left in the bag. Watts returned the bag to the owner, whom she described as an elderly woman, but said she does not have the woman’s last name or phone number. Watts said the woman told her that the money came from selling her home and her belongings and that she was going to start a new life in Florida with her son. Watts says the woman offered to pay her $1,000, but Watts refused it. A manager of the Cracker Barrel restaurant, Bill Shupp, said no employees actually saw the money or the elderly owner.”
If this happened to you, what WOULD you do? Would you give it back? I mean, no one would know but you (and God). Oh, the dilemma this would cause, especially in the economy we are now experiencing.
December 11th, 2008 at 7:23 am
That story seems suspicious. It happened, but nobody seems to know much about it.
Let’s see, I think I would hold on to the money until I heard something about it on the news.
My question is this: when would it be enough money to turn it in? If I found $5 on the ground I’m going to put it in my pocket and keep on moving. If I found $100 I would do the same. When does the dollar amount get to the point where someone thinks about turning it in?
Tom Sawyers last blog post..The Big 3 Are Bailing Themselves Out
December 11th, 2008 at 7:50 am
This story could not be true since there are no $1,000 bills. The highest US currency is the $100 bill.
December 11th, 2008 at 8:05 am
Hi Kate. Welcome to 7daybuzz. Actually, $1,000 bills do exist, but the treasury stopped printing them in 1969. So, because they are legal, they may still be in circulation today. Because they could still be floating around (think of an elderly person who collected the bills while they were still being printed), this story COULD be true. Just something to think about.
The present denominations of our currency in production are $1, $2, 5$, $10, $20, $50 and $100. In 1969, the treasury stopped printing the $500, $1,000, $5,000 and $10,000 bills, but that doesn’t mean they are not still circulating.
December 11th, 2008 at 8:44 am
This would never happen to me so I don’t need to think about the moral dilemma involved. But i think I’m going to hit Cracker Barrell up, who’s with me?
December 11th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Of course I would give it back but it would hurt!!! AND… I wouldn’t give it back until and unless I knew for 200% sure it belonged to someone. I wouldn’t even call and leave my name saying I had something. I would call and ask if there were any calls regarding lost money.
I will be honest. I would hope nobody ever claimed it! What is the law’s statute of limitation for keeping found money if it is not claimed, and what is the statute of limitation for your Christianity to stay in tact, when keeping found money, if nobody claims it within the law’s time frame???
December 12th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
I will return it only when am very sure of the owner,as for the story being true or not
well! i wish i can find such money.
tynas last blog post..Do What You Love and Get Paid for It!
December 12th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
Excellent story idea! This is, of course, the reason more people should get your blog delivered to their inbox every day!
There’s so much going on in this story. It’s like a juicy morsel that you don’t quite know where to wade in first and start biting. But here I go…
Okay, so the first thing that struck me after reading the comments is the bit about $1000 bills no longer being in print. So I had to make a brief detour to research that angle and discovered some links which contain useful background info:
tinyurl dot com/2lt5xh
tinyurl dot com/6aregv
tinyurl dot com/55dhlz
tinyurl dot com/2kb2yz
Turns out that $1,000 bills were last printed in 1945 and in 1969 they were officially taken out of circulation. They are still legal tender but as the Federal Reserve Banks receives them, they are destroyed. This means that any surviving $1,000 bills are actually worth more than their face value due to the value to collectors. This other value is known as the numismatic value.
Knowing this background information allows one to evaluate this story and deduce that the person who claimed the money highly likely told a lie. She most likely did not receive 97 $1,000 bills as payment for her house and belongings from anyone, although there is a small outside chance that she did. So there remains an unsolved mystery about this story. How did the woman actually come by that amount of cash? We may never know unless she starts spending it or selling it to collectors.
These bills were taken out of circulation to combat organised crime.
If I found a bag containing a large amount of money, I’d take it home and make discreet inquiries to see if I could trace the owner. I would not go to the cops with the bag of money because I don’t trust them to do the right thing. I perceive them as a high risk of making some bureaucratic blunder. Also I don’t want to run the risk of being arrested by them, which is a possibility even though I am coming forward with evidence. I just don’t trust cops.
If I could not trace the owner, I would not try to redeem any of it or change any of it at a bank or buy anything at a shop with them. I also would not be calling any reporters. I’d keep my mouth shut and make discreet inquiries with dealers to ascertain the numismatic value. If it was worth something, I might try auctioning off a single $1,000 note on eBay and see what I get for it. If that worked, I’d auction every note off individually and set as a reserve value, the moving average of each winning bid to maximise my return.
I would spend and invest the money I got from auctioning the notes off. And every night I’d pray to God that my door doesn’t get kicked in at 2AM by the DEA or FBI in some kind of sting operation.
Richard Cattos last blog post..Uniforum SA’s non benign rule of the co.za SLD
December 12th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
highly unlikely story. just like the story of the man having a baby- was a woman all along. finders keepers, losers, well losers are just that, losers with a big L on their forehead. you dont just leave or forget that kind of $. if this actually happened and i found it, then thank you jesus. i would consider it a blessing straight from heaven. i ain’t calling nobody. i’ll watch the news and keep an ear out for somebody crying ’bout their lost $ and if someone tried to say it was theirs i would start negotiating. just like winning the lottery, it’s easy to say what one would do but until it happens to you, you don’t know for sure what you might do. if i lost or left some sizable $ behind, i hope that one of yall righteous people find it and give it back to me. that’s all, i’m thru, pray my strength in the lord.
December 12th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
I agree Richard, everyone should be getting this blog every day.
Tom Sawyers last blog post..The Big 3 Are Bailing Themselves Out
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