The Magnet Fisherman’s Dilemma: What to Do With $70,000 Before It Disintegrates
James Kane was bleary-eyed as he climbed onto the upper deck of a Megabus, wearing a cowboy hat with stickers and carrying a backpack that contained a small fortune.
He’d only gotten three hours of sleep the night before, as the previous day had been a blur of interviews with news wires, TV stations and radio programs. He was headed to Washington, more specifically to an obscure branch of the Treasury Department that dealt with mutilated currency.
It all started when he hoisted a safe out of a creek in Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens. Ever since losing his job during the pandemic, Mr. Kane had been trying to establish himself as a magnet fisherman with a YouTube channel. He had the cops on speed dial as someone who regularly found computer hard drives, gun parts and the occasional live grenade.
But a safe with money in it was the unspoken Holy Grail, and the responding officers said: finders keepers. The news spread to local reporters, who all wanted a piece of him and his partner-turned-videographer, Barbie Agostini. But then the news of their record-breaking haul began to traverse time zones. The couple even got the honor of asking a question on a celebrity game show in Australia: “Hi, we’re James and Barbie from Queens, N.Y., and what did we find in the water last week?”
The answer, as breathlessly reported by The Guardian, the BBC, and The New York Post — and verified only by Mr. Kane himself — was a safe containing maybe $100,000. Technically, this is all he ever hoped for, though he hadn’t really planned for what would happen if he ever hit it big. Now long-lost acquaintances were coming out of the woodwork, and strangers were bombarding the family with sob stories on social media. Feeling panicked, Mr. Kane emailed the government.
