I’m one of the poorest people on this board and yet I wouldn’t take a dime. I would probably take that bag right back where I found it and never look back. I don’t want any part of any drug money. I once lived with a small time dealer but I saw enough then to know it’s not a good thing for anyone, much less anyone with a family to get involved in. And it is involvement when someone has dropped 100,000 dollars on the road. That is too suspicious there.
So paranoid or not, I wouldn’t keep it. And I’d still be freaked out just knowing I had it and someone might know I had it.
But honestly I’d rather track down the owner than go to the police. My experiences with them have been that bad.
Hey, you made the scenario! You thought Dopers wouldn’t consider every angle? I thought the drug equipment bit was in there to make it different than most hypothetical ‘mystery money’ scenarios that involve few details.
Anyway, I would totally keep the money. I wouldn’t bother turning in the rest to the police either, in order to avoid any scrutiny/questioning. I’d probably bury the drug-making stuff as that would be a better option than going through some hazmat disposal process.
I wouldn’t be paranoid at all, because $100k really isn’t all that much money to alarm the feds about unless you’re stupid and try to deposit it all into one account.
AFAICT, the only red flags that occur WRT the IRS or any other federal agencies is when amounts exceed $10k…and then a hold gets put on your money. That’s what happened to me and was explained to me by my bank when I inherited $15k from my grandmother.
I would have zero qualms about going out with scads of cash and buying some things I wanted, like a big TV, a new computer, etc. Cash purchases in amounts less than a few grand aren’t going to alarm anyone.
The rest I would probably do what other “Keeper Dopers” have suggested…cash purchases for gasoline, groceries, etc and some small “extra” deposits into my bank account to cover bills. Nobody would notice, and I would be using that money for a better purpose than the drug dealers would have, so fuck them. No moral qualms about it at all, not one iota. Found money is kept money, no matter the amount. Unless of course it was something like seeing someone drop their wallet at a store or something…I would immediately return that to its owner. But obvious drug money? No fucking way. Its mine.
Well, in that case, I’d just leave it where it is. Besides, ever stop and think that whoever left it there might come looking for it? I’d be far more scared of that then the cops.
Look, FTTI, you asked what people would do, and they told you. Don’t get all butthurt when their answers differ from your’s.
However, IF I was going to spend the money? Penguins seasons tickets. Oh yeah.
No, because unless they arrive just as you’re putting it in your car, they’re never going to find you. They can’t just go house to house, searching for a big pile of money.
Yeah, same here. Knowing my luck, it’d be counterfeit money and I’d be doubly screwed. :smack:
Same luck would have the cops grilling me for days making me somehow prove that stuff wasn’t mine in the first place. :rolleyes:
I’d take the money and run. Last time I looked Police Departments weren’t short of cash. However, there is another trap into which one might fall by doing that: suppose — bearing in mind that I couldn’t tell meth from sugar or meth equipment from baking accessories — that this was nothing to do with meth, but paraphernalia purposed by local police for an illicit manufacturing facility of their own, using stolen police funds ?
Go on vacation somewhere slightly less rigorous in its fraud prevention practices than one’s own country. Take the cash with me (praying I don’t get searched on the way in), set up a bank account with the money, choosing a bank that has internet access. Link this account to a PayPal account in a fake name, and link that PayPal account to an eBay account.
Put a lot of low-ticket crap on eBay, use an internet cafe to win the saleable items.
If this actually happened, I’d turn all the stuff in, but I get that the point of this is more “what would you do if you suddenly had this totally unexpected windfall” than “what if you found drug money”
Right now, there are a lot of things. My impulsive side says take a really, really kickass vacation. Go somewhere beautiful, stay somewhere opulent, maybe take a friend or two with me… I don’t know if I’d go to Rwanda or Indonesia to see the gorillas or orangutans, or if I’d go somewhere in France instead. My more practical side says either put it toward school or toward a decent apartment. Another part says divvy it up for Christmas.
If one felt truly obligated to turn it in. Perhaps a lawyer could facilitate proper documentation that you have indeed turned in $x and that absent clear documentation that a jury would agree with that this money belongs to person x/is ransom money/whatever that the city will return $x or $x plus legal fees to sue the city in question.
My decision would be dictated by the fact that I’ve read that some drug dealers put GPS devices in their stuff. So I’d:
Take the duffel bag to the nearest police station
Leave the bag and drug stuff on their back door, take the money.
Put the money in a pillow case, go to the nearest laundry mat and wash it - hopefully disabling any remaining GPS stuff put in with the money. Air tumble dry
Go to a bank, get a safety deposit box, and place money in the box.
That way the money would be safe, secure, and not in my house.
Use the cash as needed to pay my bills - groceries, gas etc. plus taking cash to various placed like WalMart and the post office to pay other bills via money orders.
Put several thousand in the Salvation Army kettles to even out the karma.
I drive a great deal for my work, and I’ve thought about this exact thing a time or two.
Wow, some of you guys are way more paraniod and give way more credit to the bad guys and the IRS than they deserve.
As someone else mentioned, unless the bad guy sees you pick up the bag and follows you home, how the hell are they ever going to find you? Assuming you don’t live in a town of 1000 people or something, but in a fairly large metropolitan area, there is literally no way of them finding you. Unless you do something stupid like turn it into the cops for them to record your information as a witness.
Same with the IRS, unless you do some truely stupid things, the US has enough consumer spending that you’re not going to raise flags by substituting cash for some of your daily expenses. Hell, assuming you’re middle class, there are a large number of luxury items you can buy that won’t raise any eyebrows. I’ve seen people by 60 inch flat screens from my local Walmart and pay cash. Didn’t raise much of a fuss except the manager came over to empty the drawer right after the sale. New laptop from Best Buy? Not a problem, iPod? Same thing. Now sure you probably couldn’t go in and buy $20,000 at one time in cash without raising some eyebrows, but there are 4 Best Buy stores within like a 20 minute drive of me. Buying something here and there spread out to 4 stores in a month long time period? Unless you’re already under investigation for something, no way you’ll be picked out. Especially this time of year with all the Christmas shopping going on. Add in places like Walmart, SAMS club or BJ’s, and you can buy all the toys you want with nobody the wiser.
Need an addition put on your house? Or some other renovations? I’m willing to bet that most smaller contrators that are 10 people or less would be happy to take cash, and not bat an eyebrow. I could go through $100,000 in probably 6 to 8 months and not make a blip on anyones radar.
This actually happened to someone I know (not the meth, the money and possible connection to drugs or at least crime). She found a duffel bag of cash, a few thousand Euros, in a rarely-used public washroom, off-season. Her husband wanted her to put it back but instead she called the police. In the meantime some skeezy looking men passed by in four wheelers, slowed down, then kept on driving. She registered her information with the police, who took the bag, and lo and behold a few months later they gave her back the entire amount as it had gone unclaimed. But then this was only a few thousand, and in Europe. I do think she and her husband were a bit scared at the beginning but anyone watching would have known that, after they were involved, it was all in the police’s hands.
