Family Finds $45,000 In New Home Then Returns It

[Old Moparz]

Cool story, & in my opinion it seemed like the right thing to do. However, after finding all the hidden things wrong with my house, if I found that cash in my attic I'd have to keep it & call it a rebate.   


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Family Finds $45,000 In New Home Then Returns It

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110520/ap_on_fe_st/us_found_money

By CHI-CHI ZHANG, Associated Press Chi-chi Zhang, Associated Press – Thu May 19, 8:50 pm ET

SALT LAKE CITY – When Josh Ferrin closed on his family's first home, he never thought he'd make the discovery of a lifetime — then give it back.

Ferrin picked up the keys earlier this week and decided to check out the house in the Salt Lake City suburb of Bountiful. He was excited to finally have a place his family could call their own.

As he walked into the garage, a piece of cloth that clung to an attic door caught his eye. He opened the hatch and climbed up the ladder, then pulled out a metal box that looked like a World War II ammunition case.

"I freaked out, locked it my car, and called my wife to tell her she wouldn't believe what I had found," said Ferrin, who works as an artist for the Deseret News in Salt Lake City.

Then he found seven more boxes, all stuffed full with tightly wound rolls of cash bundled together with twine — more than $40,000.

Ferrin quickly took the boxes to his parent's house to count. Along with his wife and children, they spread out thousands of bills on a table, separating the bundles one by one.

They stopped counting at $40,000, but estimated there was at least $5,000 more on the table.

Ferrin thought about how such a large sum of money could go a long way, pay bills, buy things he never thought he could afford.

"I'm not perfect, and I wish I could say there was never any doubt in my mind. We knew we had to give it back, but it doesn't mean I didn't think about our car in need of repairs, how we would love to adopt a child and aren't able to do that right now, or fix up our outdated house that we just bought," Ferrin said. "But the money wasn't ours to keep and I don't believe you get a chance very often to do something radically honest, to do something ridiculously awesome for someone else and that is a lesson I hope to teach to my children."

He thought about the home's previous owner, Arnold Bangerter, who died in November and left the house to his children.

"I could imagine him in his workshop. From time to time, he would carefully bundle up $100 with twine, climb up into his attic and put it into a box to save. And he didn't do that for me," Ferrin said of the man who had worked as a biologist for the Utah Department of Fish and Game.

Bangerter purchased the home in 1966 and lived there with his wife, who died in 2005.

After most of the money was counted, Ferrin called one of Bangerter's sons with the news.

Kay Bangerter said he knew his father hid away money because he once found a bundle of cash taped beneath a drawer in their home, but he never considered his dad had stuffed away so much over the years.

"He grew up in hard times and people that survived that era didn't have anything when they came out of it unless they saved it themselves," Kay Bangerter, the oldest of the six children, told the Deseret News. "He was a saver, not a spender."

Bangerter called the money's return "a story that will outlast our generation and probably yours as well."

"I'm a father, and I worry about the future for my kids," Ferrin said. "I can see him putting that money away for a rainy day and it would have been wrong of me to deny him that thing he worked on for years. I felt like I got to write a chapter in his life, a chapter he wasn't able to finish and see it through to its conclusion."

[Dino]

I would have a hard time saying goodbye to that kind of cash, but he sure did the right thing.  Good man! 

[hemi68charger]

That's awesome....
If you're a person of faith, you know Mr. Ferrin will one day get his "just return"..........   

[moparstuart]

That's awesome....
If you're a person of faith, you know Mr. Ferrin will one day get his "just return"..........   

   I know i would love to say in this position I would have done the same thing but man that would have been very easy to justify you bought the house and its yours . Awesome that he made the right decision. 

[BigBlackDodge]

I wonder how often this happens really? Parents die late in life, kids are gone, who knows what they stashed in the house over the years that the kids are not aware of.

My wife had a geat uncle in the England that would bury money in cans in the back yard. Maybe the current owner will do some digging and return it to the family!


BBD

[69rtse4spd]

My neighbor across the street, when he died suddenly, the kids were cleaning things out, & he had money stuffed all over the house.

[doctor4766]

When I die, my kids won't find any spare money stashed away.
It all goes on my cars 

Yep, good on him for handing it over.
I'm sure he feels smug within himself at the moment.......

[Tilar]

That's awesome....
If you're a person of faith, you know Mr. Ferrin will one day get his "just return"..........    

  I know i would love to say in this position I would have done the same thing but man that would have been very easy to justify you bought the house and its yours . Awesome that he made the right decision.  

 It would be easy to say "They should have checked the whole place out" and keep the money, but after going through and cleaning out the houses of two family members over the last couple years, it would surprise you where you will find a few bucks stashed.
 
If you are ever in that position, be sure to check out under and behind all dresser drawers and cabinets and even in the freezer (one of these family members used to joke about having a lot of cold cash   )

[mikepmcs]

I'll take a different road.
I would have kept it and not felt bad about it at all.


Owners wife dies in 2005
Owner dies in 2011
Man buys house cause kids sold it(kids who never visited anyway)
Man finds money in house.
Keep the money

My cut is this....
If the original owner wanted the kids to have that money, he would have given it to them before he passed.
Why didn't he have something written down as to where the money is and how it would be distributed, etc....because the truth is he had no intention of distributing it amongst his ungrateful kids.


Think about this.....your mowing your lawn and your mower gets caught on a piece of string...you undo the string from the blade only to find that it's stuck in the ground....upon further pulling you find it's attached to something so you dig it up and it's attached to a ammo box buried and it's full of cash. Your lawn, your property, your cash, right?
What about people striking oil on their land, etc.... or finding old silver coins with a metal detector.....nobody would think to give that stuff back, right?
What about those people that find buried treasure in wrecks and they get to keep their findings....nobody ever balks at that, right?
To me, this is the same thing.  I find anything on my property that I paid for and it's mine regardless of what it is...,.money, cars, etc...
I bet if the story gets deeper you'll find that none of the kids kept in touch with the father at all, etc......
This is a well written piece to pull at peoples emotions when the truth is.... it probably was nothing like what was described.


Think about this.  What if it was $1000 instead....what would be your reaction then? or ...fast forward and the same guy who bought the house finds it 20 years later tucked away in the back of the attic...would he give it back then?  Hell no.

[Old Moparz]

I'll take a different road.
I would have kept it and not felt bad about it at all.


Owners wife dies in 2005
Owner dies in 2011
Man buys house cause kids sold it(kids who never visited anyway)
Man finds money in house.
Keep the money

My cut is this....
If the original owner wanted the kids to have that money, he would have given it to them before he passed.
Why didn't he have something written down as to where the money is and how it would be distributed, etc....because the truth is he had no intention of distributing it amongst his ungrateful kids.


Think about this.....your mowing your lawn and your mower gets caught on a piece of string...you undo the string from the blade only to find that it's stuck in the ground....upon further pulling you find it's attached to something so you dig it up and it's attached to a ammo box buried and it's full of cash. Your lawn, your property, your cash, right?
What about people striking oil on their land, etc.... or finding old silver coins with a metal detector.....nobody would think to give that stuff back, right?
What about those people that find buried treasure in wrecks and they get to keep their findings....nobody ever balks at that, right?
To me, this is the same thing.  I find anything on my property that I paid for and it's mine regardless of what it is...,.money, cars, etc...
I bet if the story gets deeper you'll find that none of the kids kept in touch with the father at all, etc......
This is a well written piece to pull at peoples emotions when the truth is.... it probably was nothing like what was described.


Think about this.  What if it was $1000 instead....what would be your reaction then? or ...fast forward and the same guy who bought the house finds it 20 years later tucked away in the back of the attic...would he give it back then?  Hell no.

That's an interesting point, but I'd take it a step further by saying that the guy who found it could use his own judgment on what the old guy's kids were like. The guy who found the cash bought the house from the owner's kids, so he probably had a good idea of what they were like. He may not have either, but I think he may have met with them prior to the closing & may have been able to see how they conducted themselves with the sale. Were they firm & greedy, not willing to make the sale go smoothly, or were they willing to bargain & be reasonable by making the house accessible to the buyer & inspectors? 

I know you can't always judge someone's character or their monetary values with limited contact, but I've met a few people that only took me a few seconds to know that my wallet was their biggest interest & they didn't give a rat's ass about anyone but themselves. I didn't know the people I purchased my house from, but they did seem pretty decent on the surface. What was wrong with my house was obviously the fault of the builder, not the owner since it was less than 2 years old. If the owner had been the builder, the stuff I saw wrong with the house would have raised the issue of whether the owner was doing the same to me as halpag does to car buyers.

I wouldn't give the money back & wouldn't have given it a second thought if that was the case.   

[stripedelete]

Ya, I'm pretty much with Mike and Tilar.

First, why didn't the deceased say anything? (He might have stashed it for the family in the beginning but,,,,every family is screwed up)

If the old man stashed that much in cash, he was probably worth a million or two above board.  Which was not uncommon for that generation.   So the kids couldn't get his crap cleaned out and the house sold fast enough to settle the estate.  Probably hired someone to do it.  

((Saw this scenario first hand in my house flipping days.  Example: Four kids sell dad's house for $40K under market.  They each take a $10k hit to get at the big dough immediately. ))

It's good to know there are still good people in the world.  But, I think the old man would have been OK with this guy keeping the money.   I think I would have kept it.

Now, with that said, if one of the kids would have asked for access to the garage attic before I found the money, I would have let him walk out with the cash...

Looking for loot?  FYI, the grungy, dirty, toothless, guy at the estate sale is not buying the books for $.25 a box because he is a veracious reader.   He's buying lottery tickets..........  

[71ChallengeHer]

I'm really surprised the family didn't dive the nice guy a couple grand or more "for doing the right thing "

[RECHRGD]

I'm really surprised the family didn't dive the nice guy a couple grand or more "for doing the right thing "

I agree!!!!  If I was presented with an unexpected windfall like that,  I would have split it with the guy just on principle alone.  That would show true integrity on both sides.  To just take the money and offer nothing in return for this good deed shows no integrity on the part of the recipient.  Bob

[stripedelete]

What would you have done in this situation?

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

[RECHRGD]

What would you have done in this situation?

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

I remember that one.  A little different situation though.  The contractor did not own the property and had arguable right to the money.  He should have taken the 10% offered and shut up.

[BigBlackDodge]

Another thought is that money could have been up in the attic when the old man bought it...maybe he wasn't the one who hid it?


Of course if the kids are asked if it's theirs they'll say yes!


BBD

[1969chargerrtse]

I'm really surprised the family didn't dive the nice guy a couple grand or more "for doing the right thing "

On all points.