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Recycling plant worker finds $100,000 stashed inside 30-year-old TV

By Ben Hooper
An old TV being disassembled at an Ontario recycling center was found to contain more than $100,000 cash. Screenshot: WPIX-TV
An old TV being disassembled at an Ontario recycling center was found to contain more than $100,000 cash. Screenshot: WPIX-TV

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Feb. 17 (UPI) -- A worker at an Ontario recycling plant opened up an old TV set and made a shocking discovery -- more than $100,000 cash.

Rick Deschamps, general manager of Global Electric Electronic Processing in Barrie, said the TV was brought to the facility over a year ago, but a worker just started disassembling it in late January.

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"She came running up with this security cash box and she goes, 'I found $10,000,'" he told CBC News. "I opened it up and I saw four bundles of $50 bills and I went, 'I think that's more.'"

"There was like, four stacks of $50 bills, and I knew it was a large amount of money," Deschamps told CTV News.

The cash amounted to more than $100,000 -- more than $75,000 in U.S. currency.

"We do anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 televisions a month, so the odds that that TV came at that particular moment with that woman, she opened it up, started dismantling it and finding the cash box -- it's like finding the lottery," the manager said.

The cash box also contained documents that helped police track down the rightful owner, a 68-year-old man in Bolsover, Ontario.

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"We had to do a little bit of an investigation to make sure the cash was getting into the right hands," Constable Nicole Rodgers of Barrie police said.

The man told police the money was inherited from his parents and stashed in the TV for safe-keeping, but he eventually forgot about the cash and gave the TV to a family friend.

The owner said the money will likely be passed on as inheritance to his family members.

"Hopefully he's put it in a savings account now," Rodgers said.

Lew Coffin, GEEP vice president of operations, praised the employee who found the cash box.

"She's representative of all our employees and it's what we stand for and this kind of behavior is really what we would expect from everyone here," Coffin said.

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