A Couple "Magnet Fishing" in a Lake Discovered a Safe With $100,000. Police Let Them Keep It!

Magnet fishing can sometimes yield more than just an old watch and a few coins. This lucky American couple struck gold!

A New York couple went fishing at Flushing Meadows Corona Park Lake in Queens on May 31. This wasn't traditional fishing; they were searching for old metal objects using a magnet. This treasure hunt involves attaching a powerful magnet to the end of a rope and throwing it into the water, hoping to catch metallic items. And they were very lucky...

After tossing the magnet into the lake, James Kane and Barbie Agostini pulled out a heavy object. It turned out to be a safe. When they opened it, they found around $100,000 inside, arranged in $100 bundles. "We pulled it up and found two bundles of hundreds [of dollars] inside," the couple told NY1.

The ink on the bills remained intact despite being waterlogged. "They were in piles, completely soaked, mostly destroyed," Agostini recounted. "There was no identification in the safe, and no way to determine its owner." Unfortunately, it is unlikely that the couple will be able to restore the bills to their original quality and get to spend them. 

The discovery surprised and delighted them, but they decided to report it to the New York Police Department. The officers informed them that there was no crime associated with the money and no way to identify the original owner of the safe, so they were allowed to keep it: "The police said, 'Well, congratulations!'" 

"I couldn't believe it," Kane shared his joy with reporters. The couple explained that they started magnet fishing during their free time in the Covid-19 pandemic, fascinated by the idea of finding treasures in the water without spending too much on metal detectors and other expensive equipment.

According to Kane and Agostini, they had previously pulled old rifles, foreign coins, and jewelry, and even a motorcycle from their city's lakes. But they had never found anything as valuable as their latest discovery.

Other magnet fishers have some impressive and often morbid discoveries in recent months. In May, a magnet fisher in New Orleans pulled out a human skull padlocked an exercise dumbbell from a waterway. And in April, another fisher in Georgia found a rifle along with belongings of a couple who were killed nearly a decade ago.