Thursday, May 3, 2018

Why is keeping it a felony?

So a Brinks truck dropped about $600 Large in assorted small bills on I-70. 

Seems "The door fell open" or something like that.

The bundles of bills broke open and scattered over the road.

People being people, many passers-by stopped and picked up some of the cash.

Apparently, keeping it is a felony (according to the State Police)

Why so? No one stole the money, it was blowing across the road.

If I find a $50 bill blowing in the wind in a parking lot, I get to keep that. It isn't up to me to find the bill's owner. If I find an envelope with some cash in it, even after turning it in, if no one can prove it is theirs and claims it, it comes back to me, the finder.

Why, since the Brinks folks lost some cash, is keeping any cash I found blowing across the road a felony?

I mean, Finders Keeper sand all that. The Brinks folks did not have control of the money. The lost it.

Salvage rights?

Now, the moral thing to do is to return the money. If, of course, Brinks can prove that that was their money. If they can't, then it should belong to the finder.

How about if I find it next week a mile away?


1 comment:

Peteforester said...

It's one of those "if you know" things. If you see someone drop a C-note on the ground, and keep it instead of returning it, it's a sin. If you find the C-note at random, there's no sin in keeping it.

I remember when a Brinks truck overturned in (you can't make this stuff up) Overtown, in Miami. Overtown is basically a housing project, with the usual suspects living in them. That truck rolled down the embankment, and the only thing that emptied quicker than the back of that truck was the housing project, as its inhabitants poured out and ransacked the truck! The only money Brinks ever got back was a jar of coins returned by an eight-year-old girl. ...I guess the rest didn't care if it was a felony to keep the money...