So You Found a Wallet

That sounds a lot like entrapment to me.

 

When I was a little kid I went to a garage sale with my folks and one of my brothers. As we were walking down the driveway to leave, my dad found a wallet. The wallet was so full of money that it had rubber bands holding it closed. My dad checked the license and saw it was a guy who had walked past into the sale. He immediately had my brother return it to the guy. As we were piling into the car, the guy comes out and writes down our license plate number of our car! No thank you, no note of thanks mailed later on.

But, we were always taught to turn it in if the owner can be found. Good karma in the bank for handling it that way!

I recently charged a lady with Theft of Lost or Mislaid Property after she found an Ipad and kept it. A lady left a store in our town and forgot her Ipad in the cart when she pushed it into the parking lot shopping cart return. I reviewed the store's surveillance video and was able to see a woman walk up the return (view was blocked by her car) right after my victim left. I tracked that lady back into the store and to the register she checked out at. I was able to get her info since she paid with a credit card. Long story made short, after tracking down some bad addresses I went to her home several days later. After a quick interview and a reminder of the great surveillance video stores have these days, the lady admitted to finding the Ipad and keeping it. She went to the kitchen and brought it to me (which I identified thru the religious phrase engraved on it). The woman got completely pissy with me and said it's ridiculous that she was in trouble for "finding something". She put all the blame on the woman who lost it and basically said "finders keepers"!. She later used some good logic and pled guilty so that I didn't have to present my story to the judge!

This is the Illinois law:
(720 ILCS 5/16‑2) (from Ch. 38, par. 16‑2)
Sec. 16‑2. Theft of lost or mislaid property. A person commits theft of lost or mislaid property when he or she obtains control over the property and:
(a) Knows or learns the identity of the owner or knows, or is aware of, or learns of a reasonable method of identifying the owner, and
(b) Fails to take reasonable measures to restore the property to the owner, and
(c) Intends to deprive the owner permanently of the use or benefit of the property.
(d) Sentence.
Theft of lost or mislaid property where:
(1) the value does not exceed $500 is a Class B
misdemeanor;

(2) the value exceeds $500 but does not exceed
$10,000 is a Class A misdemeanor; and

(3) the value exceeds $10,000 is a Class 4 felony.
(Source: P.A. 97‑597, eff. 1‑1‑12.)

 

I don't understand why he took your license plate down, am I missing something?

 

The only thing we could figure is he did that in case something was missing. Kind of odd since we returned it to him still stuffed with his cash! Like Jim Morrison used to say, "People are strange".

 

Indeed they are!

 

Watch No Country for Old Men and get back to me on that!

 

When I was about 8 I found a wallet, business card (doctor practise) said its address which was conveniently on the way home for me. I returned it without taking money (650 guilders) or asking my parents what I should do. Owner was delighted and gave me 50 bucks! Bought a 1/43 550 Maranello with it that weekend .

unfortunately karma hasn't been as nice to me yet.

 

I never found a wallet yet but i did find several phones that i have returned to their owners.

 

Someday it will.........karma doesn't forget!

 

Just curious, but how did the miscreant meet this part of the criteria for conviction?

 

Oh - and I've returned a wallet with approx $5k that I found in a gas station. My uncle found almost $20k in an envelope in a convenience store & returned that.

 

The owners info was on the Ipad as well as when you turned it on. Their phone number popped up in Itunes also. The person admitted to seeing this info and erasing it when they set up Itunes.

 

LOL! Thank goodness the dishonest are also often rather stupid...

 

I was gonna say this "Any decent human being who was raised with any sense of morals would contact the owner and return the wallet with everything intact as they found it" but then I took a step back and I thought about it in my police officers frame of mind which lead's me to believe that if the OP has to ask about such thing's his character and moral's are suspect and not what they SHOULD BE!!!

 

YEP. Regardless of how much was in it.

No question about it.

NONE.






If ANYONE here would remove a single cent PLEASE, SPEAK UP.

The rest of us will know who to NEVER DO BUSINESS with.

 

We refer to that as "Job Security" in my line of work!