Stories like this are fairly common in the news: some working-class schmoe finds a boatload of money and piously returns it, for no reward other than feeling all warm and tingly inside. I'm not gonna lie: if I found $65,000 on the side of the road, I'd slyly pick it up and vamoose out of there with nary a guilty pang. In fact, I have visualized the ideal situation where a suitcase of money is accidentally left on the top of a mobbed-up car and slides off into the woods, where yours truly happens to be looking for a lost frisbee. Thanks to the cover of the woods and the fact the car drove off without returning to search, I get home scott-free with a fat load of cash. Now, being the upstanding citizen that I am, if there was ID with the money I'd return it (meh...probably not, unless it was a wallet). But assuming it was anonymous money (like those famous bags of dough with the "$" sign on them) I'd prudently stash the cash away. I would use it for small purchases, nothing crazy--food, new tires, nothing that would raise an eyebrow (unless I wanted a facelift, which would probably raise both eyebrows). I would not go out and buy meals of great-horned owl fillets encrusted in dodo egg shell powder, served in tangy manatee sauce, supplimented by snow leopard milk.
In my whole life, I've probably found something in the neighborhood of $9 in free money (including a sweet fiver in a parking lot), probably lost about $100. So I'm still down $91 but I can still dream of the rushed drug deal, where the strung out participants have no idea where that missing 3 million dollars went.
And somewhere in Boulder, a veteran postman barely notices the influx of NES games from eBay to a certain lucky frisbee player...
