A couple who stumbled upon a safe full of $100,000 while magnet fishing on a Queens lake may have struck gold, but they won’t be able to cash in on their newfound fortune until next year.
James Cain and Barbie Agostini took their muddy, soggy possessions last Friday to the Treasury Department in Washington, where a team of 11 people will spend up to nine months sifting through the soggy cash and replacing it with new notes.
Once the fight is over, Kane and Agostini will receive large amounts of tax-free money.
“America the Beautiful!” Cain He told the New York Times.
The Treasury Printing Office has a team dedicated to dealing with the strange but not uncommon predicament that Messrs. Cain and Agostini find themselves in.
Typically, workers deal with the remains of money — sometimes literally in pieces — that families have found buried in their backyards.
That makes disposing of Kane’s rotting cash seem like a much easier task, especially since the lucky fisherman estimates that of the roughly $100,000 he found, only about 40 percent survived two weeks on land.
He also told the paper he regretted leaving the stack of bills in the park, which he believed was damaged beyond repair.
After their story went viral online and long-lost friends and near strangers showed up to claim their find, the couple turned to the government for help.
“All of the attention we are receiving because of this funding is making us a little crazy and a little scared,” Cain wrote in an email to the Treasury Department.
“We don’t have much money so we’re going to take the bus and get there with what we have,” he continued, adding that his predicament is time-bound as money is becoming fragile and beginning to crumble.
In the lobby of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, officials quickly estimated that Kane had between $50,000 and $70,000 on hand.
When a couple lowered a magnetic fishing pole into a pond in Queens earlier this month, they didn’t expect to hit the jackpot.
The pair, who document their adventures on YouTube, have found many safes before, but most of them are empty.
Instead, they found two stacks of $100 bills covered in mud.
To avoid legal trouble, they called the NYPD, but officers said it belonged to whoever picked it up.
“This is the most significant find in the history of poor people’s treasure hunting,” Cain said.
