What would YOU have done????



http://news.yahoo.com/s/a...dden_money

Cash found in Ohio house's walls becomes nightmare

By JOE MILICIA, Associated Press Writer Joe Milicia, Associated Press Writer – Sat Nov 8, 2:55 pm ET AP … CLEVELAND –

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.

It didn't help Reece much, either. She testified in a deposition that she was considering bankruptcy and that a bank recently foreclosed on one of her properties.

And 21 descendants of Patrick Dunne — the wealthy businessman who stashed the money that was minted in a time of bank collapses and joblessness — will each get a mere fraction of the find.

"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."

Kitts was tearing the bathroom walls out of an 83-year-old home near Lake Erie in 2006 when he discovered two green metal lockboxes suspended inside a wall below the medicine chest, hanging from a wire. Inside were white envelopes with the return address for "P. Dunne News Agency."

"I ripped the corner off of one," Kitts said during a deposition in a lawsuit filed by Dunne's estate. "I saw a 50 and got a little dizzy."

He called Reece, a former high school classmate who had hired him for a remodeling project.

They counted the cash and posed for photographs, both grinning like lottery jackpot winners.

But how to share? She offered 10 percent. He wanted 40 percent. From there things went sour.

A month after The Plain Dealer reported on the case in December 2007, Dunne's estate got involved, suing for the right to the money.

By then there was little left to claim.

Reece testified in a deposition that she spent about $14,000 on a trip to Hawaii and had sold some of the rare late 1920s bills. She said about $60,000 was stolen from a shoe box in her closet but testified that she never reported the theft to police.

Kitts said Reece accused him of stealing the money and began leaving him threatening phone messages. Marcinkevicius doesn't believe the money was stolen but said he couldn't prove otherwise.

Reece's phone number has been disconnected, and her attorney Robert Lazzaro did not return a call seeking comment. There were no court records showing that Reece had filed for bankruptcy.

Kitts said he lost a lot of business because media reports on the case portrayed him as greedy, but he feels vindicated by the court's decision to give him a share.

"I was not the bad guy that everybody made me out to be," Kitts said. "I didn't do anything wrong."

He's often asked why he didn't keep his mouth shut and pocket the money. He says he wasn't raised that way.

"It was a neat experience, something that won't happen again," Kitts said. "In that regard, it was pretty fascinating; seeing that amount of money in front of you was breathtaking. In that regard, I don't regret it.

"The threats and all — that's the part that makes you wish it never happened."

That's a tricky one. I probably would've turne it in to the authorities and had them figure it out.

I guess I don't know why the contractor would have assumed he'd get any. If it's in the house and she owns the house, it would belong to her, 10% was a generous offer.

well. i guess we can ALL learn a big old lesson from this: hide your cash in the mattress, NOT the wall!

CarrieMpls said:

Nothin wrong with 20 grand for nothing!

I wonder how the guy who put it there just forgot about it? Did he just keel over and forget to tell anyone in his family he hid all that money? What an idiot.

Greed.....a uniquely human trait.

CarrieMpls said:

I don't know...doesn't he deserve a bigger finder's fee than 10 percent? He could have hidden his discovery and taken it all. And since she never would have found it on her own, she could have offered more than just 10 percent. Maybe he would have settled for something like 30 percent and then none of the rest of it would have happened.

Efan said:

People should not be guaranteed a reward for simply doing the right thing. He didn't steal her money, so that automatically entitles him to some of it? That's BS. I still think 10% is a generous offer.

CarrieMpls said:

to me there is nothing worse than a cheap ass reward for being honest

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

But when the builder finds problems in your house he doesn't share the cost!

CarrieMpls said:

I wasn't thinking of it as a reward. I was just saying that she never would have found the money without him, so it wouldn't have hurt her to offer her old high school friend a bigger cut. She apparently would rather lose all the money than see an old friend get a large percentage of it. It's just a weird facet of human nature that people will go so far as to punish themselves just to prevent someone else from getting what they consider to be theirs. All of which is not to say that the contractor wasn't greedy too. I just think she could have negotiated with him and they could have come to some kind of agreement.

Electrostar said:

And he could have fucked her over to the tune of 182K

Efan said:

Any way you slice it, you're saying she should reward him for handing over her money.
I think it's sad they couldn't work it out between them too, but if anyone's in the wrong, it's the builder for even thinking he's entitled to any of it. It would be interesting to see what different state laws are regarding this. I can't believe he got anything at all.

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

Probably more in my experience.

Electrostar said:

Hows that gorgeous baby of yours?

Well, here's another answer to this thread, huh??

http://prince.org/msg/100/288257

Electrostar said:

That's exactly what I was thinking.

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

He's just learned to crawl. Like a teenager who just got a car. Crashing into walls wherever he goes!

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

Exactly! Greedy s.o.b.!

After the way it all turned out, the two of them should've turned it in to the authorities because for all the talk of the contractor wanting more for doing the "right thing" in telling her he found it, she sure as hell wasn't thinking about the "right thing" by claiming it when she knew it wasn't hers to begin with...