Cash to trash: woman throws out million dollar mattress
- Wednesday, June 10, 2009, 18:07
- 6 comments
An Israeli woman has sparked a desperate search through landfill sites around Tel Aviv after accidentally throwing away a mattress containing $1 million (approximately £700,000) in cash.
The woman, known only as Anat, had bought a new mattress for her mother as a surprise and thrown out the old one. It wasn’t until the following morning when her mother awoke screaming that she realised something was wrong. The elderly woman had been squirreling her savings away inside the mattress for years, and now it was heading for the garbage heap in Hiriya.
By the time the woman reached the site, the mattress had been moved on with up to 3,000 tons rubbish to a larger site. Speaking to Army Radio, the manager of the tip claimed that his staff are helping them in their search, and claimed that ‘Anat’ appeared “totally desperate.” Not surprising, given that the site receives over 2,500 tons of new rubbish every day.
The money is thought to have represented the entirety of the elderly woman’s life savings, but she has asked not to be identified and has refused to give further details that might aid the search. It is thought that she fears treasure hunters will reach the mattress before she does. Ask why she had chosen to stash her cash in a mattress rather than in a bank, she referred vaguely to a bad experience she had suffered in the past, but refused to go into detail.
At the time of writing, the Israeli police have stated that no report of the incident has been filed, but a picture of the woman searching a landfill has appeared in Yediot Ahronot, a daily newspaper published in Tel Aviv.
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Iva Marjanovic has written 157 stories on this site.
Iva also writes a very popular personal finance blog where she writes about frugal tips, debt-elimination plans and money saving ideas.
6 Comments on “Cash to trash: woman throws out million dollar mattress”
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Now-a-days it is as safe in the mattress as it is in a bank. At least with the mattress you have someone laying watch over it.
Talk about life imitating art — this was actually a storyline on the cartoon “Spongebob Squarepants” — when Spongebob and Patrick threw out miser Mr. Krabs’ lumpy, uncomfortable old mattress (which was lumpy and uncomfortable because it had a million dollars in it!), and they had to retrieve it from the garbage heap.
I just read about this, too, on another of my fellow colleague’s blogs (The Digerati Life). I hope all this publicity doesn’t adversely affect her ability to get the money back. I wonder, why would they have gone to the press about it in the first place? Easy enough to call locally and track it down, no?
LETS ALL JUST PRAY THAT SHE GETS HER MONNY BACK
S.L
ASK FIRST! My grandmother and my mother-in-law would always show up with these gifts for us and we would graciously accept them, then try to figure out what the hell to do with them.
Similarly, my grandmother decided to do my laundry for me while we were away and she was watching our house. I lost 4 beautiful and very expensive sweaters to that little act of kindness.
Always better to ASK FIRST.
i wonder if the daughter had a master plan? just asking thats all.