A US woman found AUD$49,000 of cash hidden in a couch she found for free on Craigslist and suddenly I’m reinspecting all my rogue Facebook Marketplace purchases. If anyone would like to give me $49,000 along with their upcycled chest of drawers, I’d really appreciate it.
Vicky Omudo, who lives in San Bernardino County California saw someone was giving two free couches and a matching chair away on Craigslist. An excellent deal IMO.
Omudo told ABC7 News that she got in contact with the Craigslist seller to suss whether it was a gimmick. It turned out a loved one had recently passed away and the family was liquidating all the furniture on the property.
“I just moved in and I don’t have anything in my house,” Omudo said.
“I was so excited so we picked it up and brought it in.”
But when she got the free couches home, she found something weird in one of the cushions.
Now, there’s already a little bit of risk attached with buying second hand furniture. Sometimes it’s missing an essential nut-slash-bolt. Sometimes it’s a weird lingering smell and a mysterious stain you just can’t scrub out. Sometimes it’s an existential fear that a stranger either had sex or died on the furniture. Or maybe even both!
But sometimes, it’s AUD$49,000 in cold, hard cash.
According to Vicky Omudo, she thought at first the lump might be a heat pad. When she unzipped it, she found it was actually a load of envelopes stuffed with cash.
Now be honest with yourself. Would you sneak a cheeky pocketful of the cash? Even if the answer is no, I reckon it’d be pretty tempting to snag a few handfuls of twenties.
But Omudo said she knew immediately that she had to contact the family and give back the money — which she did. This is true good person behaviour and I massively respect it.
“God has been kind to me and my children, they’re all alive and well,” she told ABC7 News.
“I have three beautiful grandchildren, so what can I ever ask from God?”
The family did give her some money to say thank you though — just over AUD$3000, which she’ll use to buy a new fridge.
Apparently the family didn’t know why the money was hidden in the couch. But they did find a couple of hundred dollars hidden around the rest of the house too.
This is incredibly mysterious and frankly, I love the idea of leaving my family a puzzling event which they’ll be racking their brains about for the rest of their lives.
