Yep. If I ever found that much cash, I'd keep it in a shoebox and use it for incidentals over time. Never make a sudden deposit that large.

And sure as shit don't tell the cops about it.

Found is one thing, maybe you should call the cops.

But she had already spoken to the owner and was told to keep it.

I heard this on NPR and was fucking floored that a living breathing adult could be so fucking stupid

She's a waitress with 5 kids, she's probably not the best decision-maker.

How condescending.

why call the cops if the woman told you to keep it?

Something does not add up.

Because normally people won't give you $12,000 just like that. Something's fishy. I agree it was foolish for the woman to keep it, maybe she was desperate.

So hang on.

Someone gives you an overly generous tip and you call the cops?

So what amount should trigger a police phonecall? Just as importantly, what do you expect the cops to do about it? I see no upside at all from calling the cops.

$12,000 is not "overly generous", it's humongous.

Nah. Overly generous. Still an order of magnitude lower than the highest tip on record, no?

Again. What amount of tip should trigger a call to the cops, instead of one to your accountant?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loki%27s_Wager

There's no fixed amount. As often in life, you have to use your own judgement. For example, if the tip was given as a cheque, or added to the bill paid by credit card, I'd feel much better about accepting it.

Note that with anti money laundering regulations in place, she would have some explaining to do if she carried the $$$ to the bank. At least in the EU, maybe the regulations are more lax in the US (though I doubt it).

##Note that with anti money laundering regulations in place, she would have some explaining to do if she carried the $$$ to the bank.

FUD. Sure you have some explaining to do. "A customer left me a tip" would be the truth, and there is nothing illegal about that. As long as you pay your tax, the IRS is happy.

I was not aware that there was a federal or state limit on tips.

If you keep getting $12k tips every week, that might raise eyebrows, but this?

Folk are way too afraid for no reason.

##There's no fixed amount. As often in life, you have to use your own judgement.

Loki's Wager?? Seriously???

Who here has claimed that the matter cannot be defined? I certainly haven't.

Bottom line ... call the cops if I think a crime has been committed.

Find $12k in a box after customer has left the table. Call the cops. Depending on where you are, they'll keep that money indefinitely, or keep it for FIXNUM days and if nobody collects it, give it back to you, or give it to the man.

Find $12k in a box after customer has left the table. Chase after customer. Customer says, "keep it". Call your accountant.

Again, why is that so hard to understand?

Unless of course there is a law that says that tips above some explicitly set out amount should be reported to the cops. But this is certainly not the case.

What did she hope the cops would do? Unless of course the bit about the customer saying "keep it" is a recent fabrication.

Then again, leaving tips to waitresses is a poor way of laundering money.

Every once in a great while someone leaves a waitress with 5 kids a huge tip. It happens. Yeah, it could be a mistake, which is why it was good for her to run out to the car and ask the lady about it. Once she said "No, that's your tip", the deal was done.

She went and gave her tip to corrupt, undeserving cops with no morals. She can't really complain about it now. What did she think was going to happen.

It's like someone gave her a million bucks, set it on fire, then complained, "I had no idea it was going to burn!"

The story is fishy.

More reasonable scenario:

Waitress found a box with 12K cash. Restaurant called cop.

Cop: we'll investigate. If nobody claims the cash after 90 days, it is yours.

After 90 days -

Cop: well, nobody claimed the money. But we determined that it is drug money and we'll keep it.

The police said they detected marijuana vapors on the cash.

Subjectively, they said it kind of smelled a bit like pot when they first got it, although not any more. That gave them justification to keep it.

I might have to go to the bank and check their vault for pot smells. If I smell pot, I get to keep all of it.

Rich Tsang got it.

A $12,000 tip? Really?

The police tend to explain anything they can manage to keep as being related to "drugs".

Of course, not many people other than those involved with the drug trade carry such wades of cash.

The moral of this story is that if you want to exercise a sense of ethical and moral behavior, you need to CLEARLY define not only what that behavior will consist of, but also its IMPACT in specific situations - the OP's link being one of them.

The problem in today's society (among many) is that VERY FEW people on the planet exercise two concepts of thinking or KNOW how to pursue two fundamental concepts of thinking that determine life decision outcomes. These two concepts are:

  *Critical thinking skill sets
  *Thinking through the impact of decisions

If you don't think about life relative to these concepts, you will and are doomed and you can bet that life will toss your salad in more ways than you can count.

FYI:::: This post is NOT a less on how the world works but rather, is a lesson in NOT THINKING THROUGH the impact of one's decisions.

And civil forfeiture suits are arranged so that the waitress would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the money was *not* drug money. I agree that she didn't think out the consequences of her actions, so she indeed got a very expensive lesson in how the world works.

What happened to the waitress by no stretch of the imagination constitutes "how the world works," but is more endemic of the unique circumstances surrounding her location, culture, economics, etc.

Just stash the money under the mattress and carry 1/12 of them to the bank each month.

Sheesh, it's so difficult to figure this out :P

Or, do what the mechanic (that I used to work with) did  in this previous post:
http://www.crazyontap.com/topic.php?TopicId=47211#568911

For the waitresses case, she could have purchased items at Costco that the restaurant normally did, then been reimbursed by check by the restaurant, then deposited the check. That would have been very easy to pass off. Other than spending the cash on things like groceries and gas, instead of using your debit card, $12k would have easily been able to pass through in less than a year.

Peter, your "mechanic" sounds a bit retarded but it's pretty much the image I have on a "trader".

Only confidently trade the "asset" they know and understand. Like Rolex watches, for an instance.

Yeah, "they" (the others) laugh and mock him for not being open-minded and trade everything, like selling a country's assets for a fat commission.

In the end however it's usually him that smiles satisfied, watching his Rolex :)

Why not deposit the $12k and pay income taxes on that?

No need to fanny about with multiple schemes for this and that and doo dah.

Or am I missing something?

You can do that provided those $12K are reasonably around your declared income.
For any American family not living in the dumpsters, those money are a breeze to justify.

http://www.worldsalaries.org/usa.shtml

Average net monthly income for the lowest payed job on the survey - chambermaid: $1251. Now, indeed one would have to kinda live in the dumpsters to save $1000 each month, but if she's working since 2 years, already only has to save $500 each year. It's not illegal to stash money under the mattress. It's just that the (income - expenses) * time need to sound reasonable.

It turns out a court ruled she gets to keep it.

>Knutson and her attorney were advised to file a lawsuit for the money so that a judge could grant the police department permission to turn the $12,000 back over to Jacobson, the rightful owner. Knutson filed the suit earlier this week, and with pressure from the police department to hear the case quickly, a judge ruled Thursday that the money was hers.

>By 2 p.m. Thursday, Jacobson was once again in possession of her $12,000 tip, and the Moorhead police investigation of the drug money was considered a closed case.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/waitress-12000-tip-back-police/story?id=16087809 

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