The items inside the backpack that a homeless man turned in.
Credit: Boston police
If you found a backpack with $40,000 in it, would you turn it in?
A homeless man found himself in that very scenario. He ended up turning over the bag to police.
Officers were flagged down by the man, who police are not identifying, on Saturday afternoon at the South Bay Center in Dorchester.
The man told officers that he found the backpack containing a large sum of money and a passport near the front of the T.J. Maxx store at the shopping center.
While conducting an inventory of the bag, officers found it contained $2,400 in cash, $39,500 traveler’s checks, a passport and various personal papers.
About an hour after the homeless good Samaritan turned in the bag, police received a call from security at the Best Buy store in the shopping center. Security said a man informed staff at the store that he had lost a bag with a large amount of cash in it.
Officers picked up the man at the shopping center and took him to a police station where he was identified by his passport and reunited with his bag.
Follow Michael Naughton on Twitter @metrobosmike.
