A woman found £60,000 on a canal bank while out walking her dog and handed it in to Police which was met with much muttering along the lines of how she should have kept it.
According to the Association of Chief Police Offers there are no laws governing what you should do with a find unless it includes information which would make police able to trace the owner.
I would say the overwhelming immediate reaction of most people is that they would have kept quiet about it and kept it but conscience is a powerful thing.
Obviously £60,000 in a bin-liner smells of something dodgy and is unlikely to have been lost by law-abiding citizen so I think I'd keep it but then i'd be thinking what if i had somehow stumbled upon a trap and the first time i try to spend it armed officers are pointing guns at me and shouting at me to lay face down on the floor of Tesco. Worse, what if some criminal gang watched me tootle away with their drug money and decided to act out Goodfellas while i was deciding what colour speedboat i wanted.
Then i would try to convince myself that it had been left there deliberately by an eccentric billionaire but what if word got around that i had £60,000 in a bin liner in my bedroom and the police asked me where i got it, found it is hardly going to sound the best excuse and i'm sure the bank clerk in Natwest would be ringing her manager the second i left the building after depositing £60,000 worth of £20 notes.
Then there is the thought that as it was found alongside a canal, it was some canal dwellers savings which had somehow fallen over the side from under their mattress and they are presently frantically searching the canal for it.
I think in all honesty i would hand it in to the police and hope that the law that states if nobody claims in within 3 months i get it back is true.
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