A lucky treasure hunter discovered a life-changing amount of money in an abandoned storage unit he bought at a Storage Wars auction for just under £400
A lucky treasure hunter hit the jackpot after uncovering a life-altering sum of cash in a deserted storage unit he snapped up for just under £400.
The lucky bloke had acquired the unit at auction from Storage Wars auctioneer Dan Dotson – the hit American reality TV programme where storage facilities that have been sealed and unpaid for a minimum of three months are sold to the highest bidders, hoping there’s a treasure trove within.
Since each buyer is oblivious to the contents until after buying the unit – they were astounded by what he unearthed in a secured safe containing the life-transforming sum of money.
He splashed out just $500 (£370) for the unit before discovering the safe inside. According to Dotson, the purchaser initially attempted (unsuccessfully) to crack open the safe.
“They called a second person, and when that person opened it up… inside the safe, they’re normally empty, but this time it wasn’t empty. It had $7.5million (£5.8m) cash inside,” he revealed in a Facebook video.
The staggering amount of cash left the auctioneer bewildered, as he pondered: “$7.5 million inside of a unit, I don’t think you’d forget it, but maybe you were just in a position where somebody else was in charge of it, I don’t know?”
The origin of the cash remains a mystery, with Dotson speculating it may simply have been left behind. Despite it being a life-changing amount for the new owner of the unit, it meant the original owner had just lost $7.5 million (£5.5 million), reports the Mirror.
Dotson went on to reveal that once the initial owners discovered their storage unit had been sold with their cash still concealed inside, they immediately reached out to their solicitor to arrange negotiations with the new proprietor.
According to PEOPLE, the original owners had first proposed $600,000 to retrieve the money, but eventually agreed to a settlement that saw the purchaser return the funds in exchange for a $1.2 million (£900,000) reward. Whilst he didn’t retain the entire sum, the buyer still walked away with $1,499,500 (£1.1 million) profit from a $500 investment.
In the Facebook clip, Dotson’s wife Laura expressed that she doesn’t consider it “clean money” whilst Dotson admitted he would have accepted the $1.2 million reward, partly because he wouldn’t want to discover how far the previous owners might go to reclaim their cash. “I wouldn’t ask a damn thing,” he explained.
“$7.5 million is a lot of money… but that’s a lot of running, too.”
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