Guy buys a second-hand fridge to store his kimchi. Then, he found $130,000 cash taped under it
Spending money on home appliances is usually a transaction where people spend money on the purchase, and on power bills as well as repairs for years to come. But buying a refrigerator turned out to be completely different for a South Korean man, who found a stash of cash, amounting to $130,000, taped to it. According to South Korean media outlet MBC News, the resident of Jeju Island bought the second-hand fridge online. MBC news reported that the stash of cash was wrapped in plastic and taped directly underneath the fridge.
"It was a large amount of money. It was absurd because we rarely had such cases," says a police officer handling the case. At the time, the police were still looking for the seller, however, the man would get to keep it after paying 22 percent tax if they were unsuccessful at doing so. At the time of publishing, South Korea was experiencing record-low interest rates in banks and that's why leaving the money in the bank wasn't something that wealthy people in the country were enthusiastic about. Instead, they chose to store wads of cash in the house to avoid paying taxes.
"Rich people save their cash at home by putting it in a kimchi refrigerator as they expect little return from a bank due to low interest rates," said the Bank of Korea (BOK) director Jang Min.
This is not the first time that a man has found a massive amount of cash inside a storage unit. Destiny had something planned for another man who bought a storage space for merely $500 and got millions. The story was shared by the man's friend, a woman who went ahead and narrated the story to "Storage Wars" star Dan Dotson. The woman shared that her friend found a mysterious safe inside the storage unit that they were unable to open. Dotson recalled the woman also sharing that they had to call a professional who was finally able to open the safe. “When that person opened it up, inside the safe, normally they’re empty, but this time it wasn’t empty, it had $7.5 million cash inside,” Dotson revealed.
However, in this case, the original owners of the unit heard about the cash and quickly returned to claim their money. They sent a lawyer who offered a reward if the man returned the bag of money. Finally, the two parties reached a settlement and the buyer of the storage unit walked away with a whopping $1.5 million in profit on a $500 investment. Dotson later said that he too would have taken the $1.2 million reward with no questions asked as it felt like the man wasn't dealing with ethical money and wouldn't want to find out what the original owners could do to get the money back had he said no to the reward. “$7.5 million is a lot of money… but that’s a lot of running, too," he added.
