Ethical Dilemna - Finding Money In Random Places

[neu]

Not at all. It has nothing to do with whether or not you could be "caught".

So what is the difference between a marked and unmarked bag if it's not about being caught? The obvious implication of a marked bag is that an organisation will have ways of tracking the money and finding you, where as an individual will not.

You'd be a fool to think that no-one would miss 1000s of $ just because they didn't write their name on the bag

Also, why have you used quotation marks around caught?

 

[mheslep]

So what is the difference between a marked and unmarked bag if it's not about being caught? The obvious implication of a marked bag is that an organisation will have ways of tracking the money and finding you, where as an individual will not.

You'd be a fool to think that no-one would miss 1000s of $ just because they didn't write their name on the bag...

The issue is the practicality of return. At some point without more information it becomes impossible to reliably return a non descript sum of cash of small amounts.

 

[arildno]

Re-reading neu, I think he primarily was thinking of LARGE amounts of money, rather than amounts of money in general.

If that is the case, I am in agreement with him, because:
1. Since a bag of lots of money quite probably might be critical evidence in a criminal case, we have a citizen's duty to return the money to the police

2. Even if that were not the case, the probability of an unidentifiable original owner sharply decreases with the amount in question.

 

[LowlyPion]

Ultimately I think it all revolves around the ethics of the situation for the individual as the OP asks, and where the individual draws the line for the situation, because with such highly liquid objects as cash, the issues of common law or local statute pretty much disappear into the gray fog of enforceability or practicality as far as return or enforcement, and rest more with the issues of personal ethics.

Not surprisingly it seems that people are tending to draw the line short of exceeding the conceptually related (but different charges of) petty larceny and grand larceny, that loosely depending on jurisdiction, maybe taken as $500. (Petty larceny tending to be a misdemeanor as opposed to grand larceny a felony.)

 

[Evo]

I've got one for you, and this actually happened.

A woman bought an old rundown house. She hired a contractor to restore the house. The contractor found a metal box containing $182,000.00 dollars when he was renovating. The people that sold the house found out about the money, that must have been put there by a deceased relative that originally owned the house, and they tried to claim the money.

The woman bought the house legally, and there were no stipulations in the sale that anything found in the house would not belong to her, so the sellers had no legal claim.

The woman legally owned the house and everything in it, the contractor found it, the sellers said "oh wow, our ancestor must have put that money there".

Everyone claimed ownership, the homeowner, the contractor, and the sellers. How was this resolved in court?

 

[Proton Soup]

well, the contractor has no valid claim.

 

[neu]

RE Evo's example.

If it was obviously left by a relative of the previous owner, i.e. had some form of ID or money could be dated to period relative lived in the house, then the current owner would have to be a bit of a c*** to keep it, even if she has legal ownership.

What happened, is there a link?

 

[Evo]

Here is what happened. To me, the current homeowner would be the owner of the money, she bought the house and everything in it.

The contractor was hired to renovate, he has no claim to anything he "finds" inside that person's house.

The family of the original owner that sold the house sold it as is. They had no idea that there was money, and the money wasn't left to anyone in a will (otherwise they'd have been looking for it). I guess this would be equivalent to someone selling a locked trunk at a garage sale and the purchaser finding rare comic books worth a fortune in it.

Anyway, here's the news story. What do you think?

Cash Hidden in Ohio House Walls Becomes Contractor's Nightmare

A contractor who found $182,000 in Depression-era currency hidden in a bathroom wall has ended up with only a few thousand dollars, but he feels some vindication.

The windfall discovery amounted to little more than grief for contractor Bob Kitts, who couldn't agree on how to split the money with homeowner Amanda Reece.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,449114,00.html

 

[neu]

"If these two individuals had sat down and resolved their disputes and divided the money, the heirs would have had no knowledge of it," said attorney Gid Marcinkevicius, who represents the Dunne estate. "Because they were not able to sit down and divide it in a rational way, they both lost."

I find it funny that the attorney would admit that they shouldn't have told anyone, he's right of course; if they wanted to keep the money.

For some reason I'm on the side of the builder even though I can't see how he has right to any of it. I'm surprised the court gave him a share.

Surely legally it's hers, but morally it belongs to the closest relatives of the Dune fella.

Maybe I'm deluded, but I'd feel a little guilty spending $14000 of the money on a trip to Hawaii

 

[Proton Soup]

wow, that's not a contractor i'd want to hire. he'd probably get more business if he moved.

 

[TVP45]

It seems the most important issue would not be whether you could reasonably find the owner (scattered money rule) or whether you could get away with it, but rather what amount of money is your private, personal sense of honesty worth?

 

[JasonRox]

If I found a money bag with a large sum of money in a pretty quiet/remote area, I would keep it for sure.

Call me a thief. I don't care. I have a bag full of money.

 

[Monique]

If I found a money bag with a large sum of money in a pretty quiet/remote area, I would keep it for sure.

Call me a thief. I don't care. I have a bag full of money.

And if you found a credit card you'd also spend all the money? I wonder how you can live with yourself if you steal from another person like that. How about when you find a diamond ring, you'd also keep it?

 

[Dadface]

I lost ten dollars the other day and apparently it blew over the pond to a place called my suburbia.If anyone finds it will you please blow it back.

 

[etania]

BRAVO, Dadface :) a nice joke and a good answer for the so called "dilemma".

Actually, I do not see any dilemma here. To take or not to take? :) It's INDIVIDUAL. No statistics (if the statistics is the purpose of the "poll") can be done, because then you should ask a hundred of further questions - what your annual income is, how often you "find" money on the road, how many kids you have got to feed, how you are going to spend the picked-up $10/100/million etc.
So.. I do not see the point of the question. If the author is teased with remorses, then - take it easy :) forget :)
for me it would be more interesting to do a research on people's behaviour when they unexpectedly get a large sum (from a legal source). But then the question arises - what the large sum is...