Criminal proceeds recovery: Would you hand a fortune in cash in to the police?

The story of a young Kiwi couple who bought a house and found $232,000 hidden in the roof space provoked a fierce response after the Herald revealed that police had taken the “tainted” money as proceeds of criminal activity.

Should they be allowed to keep it?

This was the question pondered by a judge after the couple called police to report that five sealed plastic bags of cash had been discovered under the insulation in their ceiling.

The police say the money is probably “tainted” as the proceeds of criminal activity – most likely drug dealing – so it is liable to be seized and handed over to the Crown.

The couple said that even if it is tainted, they aren’t the criminals.

They maintain the link between any criminal act and the cash was broken when, as innocent parties, they bought the property.

For now, High Court Justice Rachel Dunningham has sided with the police and issued a restraining order over the money.

However, the couple will get another chance to make their case when the police take the next step in the proceedings and apply to have the money forfeited to the Crown.

Members of the Herald’s Facebook community overwhelmingly believed that the couple are entitled to the money, many offering little justification beyond “finders keepers” and one sagely prefacing their comment with: “I’m obviously not a lawyer...”.

A common thread was a distrust of authority and the belief that the couple should have kept their find to themselves.

One person labelled them “rookies” and asked “why would you even tell the police?”

“I wouldn’t have told a soul, and re-sold the house,” another offered.

The practical issues involved were raised by one person who noted that the couple would have run into trouble when attempting to bank or spend the money.

“The bank will ask you to confirm the source of funds,” they wrote, referring to anti-money laundering laws.

“The long story short, dude, ‘found it under my roof’ is not gonna convince them,” they added.

The confiscation of the cash was described as unfair by many, with commenters arguing that police should “let the little guys win for once” and saying that “honesty doesn’t pay”.

Others thought they might be sitting under a fortune and advised: “Let’s all check our roof insulations, just in case!”

The roof discovery is not the first time a large amount of cash has been discovered.

In 2018, a safe picked up by rubbish collectors in Auckland was found to contain as much as $30,000 in cash after it was cracked open by a rubbish compactor.

At the time the discovery of the cash the legal question of whether “finders keepers” applies was raised - with many asking if the money should be returned to the absent-minded safe owner who threw it away.

Barrister Marie Dyhrberg, speaking to the Herald in 2018, said in such cases it wasn’t as simple as “finders keepers”.

Anyone who found and kept a large sum of cash or valuable objects could be subject to “theft by finding” if they did not hand it in to police.

“Common sense would tell you no one would abandon [cash] and that’s an oversight.”