MELBOURNE, Australia — It turns out that honesty is the best policy. A man in Sydney was allowed to keep $88,200 that he found in a bathroom after he turned the money in to officials.
In 2011, Chamindu Amarsing was cleaning a bathroom at Channel Nine's Docklands building when he discovered a sanitary bin filled with $510 and $100 notes, according to the Herald Sun.
“There was too much to count — I thought someone was playing a prank on me,” Armarsing told the Herald Sun. “But when I touched the notes — all yellow and green — I realised it was real money.”
Amarsing made the decision to turn in the money, and he called his supervisor. Investigators discovered around $109,000 in the bathroom, with $1,300 in the piping, according to the New Zealand Herald.
However, after nearly three years of investigation, no one came forward to claim the money and police couldn't find the source of the cash. On May 6, a Melbourne magistrate ruled that $88,200 should go to Amarsing for his honesty. The remaining balance would go to the state, the New Zealand Herald reported.
Amarsing told the Herald Sun that while he hadn't yet decided how he would spend all of the money, that he wanted a portion of it to go to helping disabled people and to funding a Buddhist temple in Berwick.
Contact Faith Heaton Jolley at fheaton@ksl.com.