"if I found £[x] on the street, I would hand it in?"

pls ignore superfluous question mark in subject

Hand in where?

I found £30 sitting in a cash machine. No-one in immediate vicinity. This was in a train station, I could have handed it in to lost property.

I really should have. Now you've made me feel all guilty.

You bastard, give us that £30 back

Seriously tho, that has happened to me about three times. The one time I found money lying in the cash machine, I took it into the bank. Fucking mug.

There is no amount of money that I would hand in, unless it was next to a photo of a sad wee child and a letter from the hospital re leukemia treatment -- and even then if there was more than, say, five grand I'd still keep the money.

I reckon it would depend where I found it a bit... on a public street though, finders keepers for a fair amount. I might hand in a large amount... say $500+?

Once an old man in front of me at the ATM left his £30 behind, and I though 'suppose it saves me typing in my pin and that' and took it in the other direction. But I wouldn't do that now I'm grown up because £30 isn't such a joy to me.

i can't imagine handing in -- what do you think they'll do with it? i have yelled after someone who was in front of me at a cashpoint and walked away without their money.

But the same thing happened to me in reverse much later on - I lost £50. Boo hoo. It's dog-eat-dog on the Finchley Road.

i've lost money twice at a cashpoint.

more like 'how high would I have to be before i handed in FREE CASH'.

giving found money to charity is a nice option

xxpost - that's what I mean, it would depend where I found it. In a place with a lost property... dunno, a library or something? I'd probably hand it in because I'd be thinking of old folks like my grandma who (somewhat foolishly) still carry sums of cash on their person to avoid atms and such, and if it was in such a place there's a chance the person will check if anyone did hand it in...

surely the higher the sum the more likely you are to keep it? i've handed in twenties and fifties, but if i found five grand on the street i'd upgrade my car.

I found £30 sitting in a cash machine. No-one in immediate vicinity. This was in a train station, I could have handed it in to lost property.

If you just leave it for about a minute the machine automatically retracts it again. Whether or not it puts it back into the individual concerned's account I have no idea. Banks being the thieving bastards that they are.

In the street is rather different from in my office building. In my office, I'd probably hand in any note. OK, not a pound note - I forgot I was in Scotland and there were pound notes.

I doubt anyone in the street who lost a tenner would bother going in to the police station to claim it (partly because in the age, so few would hand it in) so I wouldn't bother handing it in. It's a bit of a Catch 22 situation.

If I found a bundle of money or a wallet in a street, I think would hand it in. I hope police don't nick such things and that I'd get it back if no one claimed it.

xxpost haha I'm just the opposite... the smaller it is the more likely I'll keep it. I handed a $100 note in at my local once... when no one claimed it after a week they gave it back to me. I just think that karma would get me if I kept a large amount that someone lost.

if I found f(x) on the street I would take its derivative

Rob from the rich, they can afford it

If you just leave it for about a minute the machine automatically retracts it again. Whether or not it puts it back into the individual concerned's account I have no idea. Banks being the thieving bastards that they are.

Yeah - I've left money in ATMs a few times and never seen it again. I presumed this was because someone walked off with it before the machine took it back. The other day I was in the bank and a woman came in to hand in some cash someone had left behind. It restored my faith in humanity a bit, but then I thought: "Actually, now the money will only be returned to its owner if they come in to claim it - better to have left it in the machine slot and just guarded it until it got grabbed back". Unless, as you say, banks are thieving bastards.

Anyone losing more than say £2000 in cash deserves to lose it. What legitimate reason would there be for carrying that amount carelessly? I've carried that much about three times in my life, and I was concentrating on it all the time.

Unless, as you say, banks are thieving bastards

Unless? Are you serious?

a girlfriend left 1500 in the atm once, it was swallowed and re-credited to her account. she was hell to live with for the few days until it could be reconfirmed though.

Anyone losing more than say £2000 in cash deserves to lose it. What legitimate reason would there be for carrying that amount carelessly? I've carried that much about three times in my life, and I was concentrating on it all the time.

I dunno, I take your point but I always think that anyone silly enough to carry a big sum like that and lose it is probably pretty vulnerable in one way or another

This is one of those threads where I can't tell if the people assholish are being serious or not.

i had to run out to the atm (half pissed) after ordering a round one night after realising i hadn't got the cash to cover it. long story short, i ended up trying to pay the barmaid with an ATM receipt and subsequently spent an hour trying (and failing) to get into the receipt bin to get my fifty quid back.

Half pissed?

I hope police don't nick such things and that I'd get it back if no one claimed it.

I was working in a shop on Christmas Eve once and when we were closing up I found someone's wallet with about £250 in it, as well as student nurse ID and an annual bus ticket. I handed it in to the local police station, and, because they were quiet, they rang all the numbers that corresponded to the town on the bus ticket and the last name on the ID. They called me about two hours later to say that they'd got the girl's parents on the phone, who had called the girl on her mobile, and that she was coming in to them to collect her wallet.

Half pissed?

-- Tom D., Thursday, 13 December 2007 12:12 (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Dude's Irish. So it's relative.

you got it. i was half as pissed as i ended up getting.

where in the world can you take out 1500 quid from an atm!?

Ireland apparently!

Mind you, you could probably get 150,000,000,000,000,000,000 out of an ATM in downtown Harare

My father found a wallet with about 8000 pounds in it. He actually handed it over to the cop nearby. Afterwards we read in the papers said cop had stolen (so probably also the money my dad had found). hah.

wtf a truck has just pulled all the christmas lights down as he drove up the street my office is on. craziness.

not to derail but woah.

Accentmonkey's story reassures me. I am so absent-minded that this kinda thing happens to me more regularly than i would like so I'm inclined to hand in lost property if I find it.

I don't believe in karma but like to think that if I were to hand in the property it would A) Confound people's cynicism about the self-centred nature of society and B) Cause a chain reaction of selfless acts and indirectly lead to world peace.

That'd be alright wouldn't it?

ATM, sorry, OTM

I said something witty and profound once, but no reply came so the OTM sucked it back in!

yeah

I found a tenner on the street a few months ago, there was no one around at all in the street who it could have belonged to. there was a slip from a betting shop with it but i didn't want to take it to the betting shop because i don't trust them, anyway i don't know if it was a used one or an unused one or how to tell the difference. i bought a cinema ticket and some sweets for my teenager friend with it, that seemed like an ok use of it.

have tenner will groom

"One man's meat is another man's chicken"

I immediately withdraw the remark.

Meanwhile there's this

Dragnet That Ensnares Good Samaritans, Too

By JIM DWYER
At first, an epidemic of absent-mindedness seemed to have broken out.

One purse was found just sitting on a display shelf in the shoe department at Macy’s. Another one turned up downstairs, in Macy’s Cellar. Yet another rested on a chair in a Midtown McDonald’s, left by a woman who had stepped into the restroom.

In fact, all three items had been planted by police officers in plainclothes during the previous six weeks. And the three people who picked them up were arrested, and now face indictment on charges that could land them in state prison.

Nine months ago, a similar police decoy program called Operation Lucky Bag was effectively shut down by prosecutors and judges who were concerned that it was sweeping up the civic-minded alongside those bent on larceny. Shopping bags, backpacks and purses were left around the subway system, then stealthily watched by undercover officers. They arrested anyone who took the items and walked past a police officer in uniform without reporting the discovery.

Now, a new version of the operation has started to catch people in public places outside the subways, and at much higher stakes, Criminal Court records show.

Unlike the initial program, in which the props were worth at most a few hundred dollars, the bags are now salted with real American Express cards, issued under pseudonyms to the Police Department.

Because the theft of a credit card is grand larceny, a Class E felony, those convicted could face sentences of up to four years. The charges in the first round of Operation Lucky Bag were nearly all petty larceny, a misdemeanor, with a maximum penalty of one year in jail.

OVER the years, decoy operations have proved to be very effective in flushing out criminals lurking in public places. They also have a history of misfires involving innocent people who stumbled into a piece of theater in the routine drama of city life.

When Lucky Bag began in February 2006, among its first 220 arrests were about 100 people who had prior charges and convictions. Police officials said those arrests helped drive down crime in the subways by about 13 percent.

However, more than half of those 220 involved people with no prior criminal record. In dismissing one case, a Brooklyn judge noted that the law gives people 10 days to turn in property they find, and suggested the city had enough real crime for the police to fight without any need to provide fresh temptations. The penal law also does not require that found items be turned over to a police officer. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office began to dismiss Lucky Bag charges.

“We spoke with N.Y.P.D.’s legal division and the transit bureau so they would understand the essentials needed for prosecution, because the early arrests were being made on faulty premises,” said Barbara Thompson, a spokeswoman for the office. “There must be evidence that the taker did not intend to return the property.”

Sneaky behavior — like trying to hide a found wallet, or slipping money out and leaving a purse behind — could show that the person meant to steal the valuables. Those instructions were added to a prosecutors’ handbook.

In February, Aquarius Cheers, a 31-year-old Manhattan man who said he was on a shopping expedition with his wife, spotted a Verizon shopping bag with a cellphone and iPod inside at the 59th Street station of the No. 1 train.

As he was looking in the bag, a train arrived. Mr. Cheers said he and his wife boarded, rushed past a uniformed officer, bringing along the bag with the intention of looking for a receipt. Undercover officers then grabbed him. After his case was reported by NY1, the prosecutors vacated the charges.

A spokesman for the Police Department took questions yesterday about the revived decoy operations, but did not provide any answers.

So far, lawyers at the Legal Aid Society have identified four pending felony cases arising from the decoys. The police complaints describe suspicious behavior. For instance, after a 50-year-old man picked up the purse left in the Macy’s shoe department, he put it in a shoe box and carried it to the other side of the store, a complaint said. Then he took the wallet out of the purse, put it in his pocket, and left the shoe box and purse behind, according to the police. That case is pending.

“We want to make sure these are not people intending to return wallets or found property,” Ms. Thompson said.

I found almost a thousand dollars on the street last year, with just a hotel receipt to identify it. It turned out to be the proceeds of a crack house, as the terrified drug-dealer underling woman I returned it to was happy to inform me. She was on her way to drop it off to whoever she worked for and it fell out of her purse or something. She had been waiting for them to come for her.

if I found f(x) on the street I would take its derivative

-- Curt1s Stephens, Thursday, 13 December 2007 11:55 (3 hours ago) Link

nerd lolz thread

ledge with the zing

Honesty is disappearing on Britain's streets

The streets of Birmingham were the least trustworthy, while Bristol was found to be the most honest city.

innocent people who stumbled into a piece of theater in the routine drama of city life.

This needs to be read in Movie Trailer Voice.

I left £10 in a cash machine once (in Bristol) and realised about 10 mins later. I went into the bank just in case someone had handed it in and they had! I was amazed. So handing it in, if there's a place to do it, could make someone's day! (£10 was quite a lot of money to me then).

Mind you I didn't object when my housemate found £100 in the road at about 2am in Manchester and spent it on loads of awesome snacks.

Weird, I was just thinking about this very question the other day, probably after having seen No Country for Old Men.

I never pick up any money I see on the street

buy some sweets, innit.

http://www.retrotuckshopsweetsdirect.co.uk/images/fruit%20salad.jpg

AW YEAH