Charity Gone Wrong Old Clothes Donation Contains 14,000 Euros
A man almost lost a small fortune while trying to be charitable over the weekend.
Foto: Jens Wolf/ picture alliance / dpaA western German man who wanted to clean out his closet and get rid of some old clothes last week realized too late that he had also accidentally thrown away some €14,000 ($18,160) in savings stashed at the back of his wardrobe.
The 41-year-old man had dumped the garments in a clothes recycling container in Wesel, western Germany, and didn't realize his loss until Saturday. So he contacted the police, who in turn called the fire department to open the container.
Unfortunately, it had already been emptied.
"So we had to find out who owned the container, who had emptied it and where the clothes had been taken to," a spokesman for the police in Wesel told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "It was quite a piece of detective work, a bit like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. Then we found the dump and had to search through a mountain of boxes. It took hours."
Finally, the man hit the jackpot and found the envelope containing the cash. "He was utterly overjoyed and deeply grateful," the spokesman said.
