What would you do if you have found $60,000 in trash? Surrender it to the authorities or keep it? This boy did the latter.

A boy from Cebu City, Philippines found $60,000, or almost P3 million in a sack dumped on a dirty landfill yesterday.

The boy first thought that the bills were fake; so he approached a couple who facilitated the exchange of the dollars into pesos. As it turned out, the bills were original so he shared a few with his fellow scavengers, giving them food and kilos of rice.

But as the new town philanthropy enjoys his richness, the supposed owner of the bills surface claiming ownership of the dollar bills. According to him, the bag was mistakenly placed inside a small sack and mistakenly (or was rather stupidly) thrown away as garbage.

The moneychanger informed Calamba barangay chairman Victor Quijano Jr. that he went to the Inayawan landfill Wednesday to look for the sack containing the dollar bills but could not find it.
Quijano, in an interview over station dyLa, said a person at the landfill informed the moneychanger that a scavenger found the money.

The viilage chief, who went to the Inayawan landfill and saw people who appeared to be celebrating, said he sought the help of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to recover the money.
He said they already had the names of the scavenger and the couple who helped exchange the dollar bills into pesos.

But the NBI agents who went to the dumpsite found the three no longer around, he said.
But lawyer Briccio Joseph Boholst, president of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) Cebu City Chapter, said the NBI could not arrest or charge the scavenger.

“There has to be intent to commit the crime. In this situation, where is the intent? I don’t think there was even a crime committed,” Boholst said over station dyLA.

He said the alleged owner should show evidence he owned the money.

Aside from a claim of ownership, Boholst said he could not see how the moneychanger could prove the money was his.

He also said the money could be considered a discarded item because it was thrown away.
“If somebody finds something in the garbage, it would mean this was discarded and he could claim it as his own,” Boholst said.

He noted that the question of the boy’s honesty could not be applied in this case.
“When you find something of value in the garbage, you would not ask who the owner was because it would be difficult to determine the identity,” he said.

Meanwhile, Quijano refused to identify the moneychanger for security reasons but he said the moneychanger’s operation was legal. He said the owners were known personalities in his village.

Via: PDI

This Philippine News entitled Boy Scavenger Finds $60,000 in Trash Literally and is labeled with the following Tags: cebu, landfill, scavenger, trash and was published on Nov 28, 2008 in Philippine News