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Germany: Teen hands in lost wallet holding thousands in cash

November 26, 2023

Police in Cuxhaven in northern Germany praised the "honest finder" who returned a wallet she'd found near a building site containing more than €7,000 in cash. They said the owner left her an "appropriate finder's fee."

https://p.dw.com/p/4ZSHk
Symbolic undated image of a woman's hands taking several euro banknotes out of an open wallet.
The wallet in question contained precisely €7,371.04, the equivalent of about two months' salary for an average earner in Germany, according to police in CuxhavenImage: K. Schmitt/Fotostand/IMAGO

A teenage girl in Cuxhaven on Germany's North Sea coast found a wallet containing several thousand euros in cash and returned it to its owner via local police. 

Local police said in a statement that the "honest finder" called on Saturday evening to say she'd found a wallet full to the brim with cash near a building site in the Lüdingworth district of the town. 

"The wallet containing €7,371.04 (a little over $8,000) was handed in to police," Cuxhaven's police said in a statement.

They said the man who'd lost it was then located and that he had traveled from Hildesheim — roughly two hours' drive south of Cuxhaven — that same evening to collect his valuable lost property. 

"He left behind an appropriate finder's fee for the 16-year-old finder," police said, without specifying what that was.

It was not clear why someone would have such a large sum of cash, the equivalent of roughly two months' salary for somebody earning around Germany's GDP per capita, on their person.

msh/wmr (dpa)