Robert Withington thought he hit the lottery when he found a bag of about $5,000 in cash in the parking lot of a Connecticut bank.
But police in Trumbull, Conn., say the 57-year-old man’s good fortune in May came in the form of thousands of dollars of the town’s tax money in a deposit bag marked with the bank’s insignia.
Months after what he thought was a lucky and lucrative morning, Withington has been charged with third-degree larceny. He turned himself in on Friday after a lengthy investigation, Trumbull police said in a news release.
Withington contends he did not see anything on the bag of cash indicating that it had an owner. He told the Trumbull Times that this was a case of “finders keepers.”
“It’s not like this was planned out,” he told Hearst Connecticut Media. “Everything was in the moment and it was like I hit the lottery. That was it.”
He added, “This is like a crock of baloney.”
Trumbull Police Lt. Brian Weir told The Washington Post in a statement that the bag of cash “contained numerous documents that identified the owner of the contents as the Town of Trumbull,” and that Withington acknowledged he had taken the money on May 30.
“He kept the bag, believing that he had no obligation to return the bag to its rightful owner,” Weir said.
If convicted, Withington could face between 1 to 5 years in prison and a $5,000 fine, according to state attorneys. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday morning. It’s not known whether he has an attorney.
Withington has run a dog-training business for years in Trumbull, about 20 miles southwest of New Haven, Conn. He had just recovered from covid-19 in May and went to a bank branch on Quality Street on the morning of May 30, Withington told the Trumbull Times.
When he came out of the bank at around 9:30 a.m., he noticed a police officer in the parking lot looking at his cellphone, Withington recalled to the Times. But Withington saw something else in the lot: a bag full of money.
Seeing that there was no one else around and the officer wasn’t paying attention, he picked up the bag, put it under his arm and walked back to his car, he said.
“I just took the cash and called it a day. I don’t even know whose it was because I didn’t look,” he said to Hearst. “All I saw was cash.”
But the bag did have an owner, police say. Authorities were notified that an employee of Trumbull’s Tax Collector Office “was unable to locate the bank deposit bag while making the delivery to the bank during the normal course of business” on May 30.
“The employee reported that they had discovered the bag was missing when they arrived at the bank,” police said in a news release.
Trumbull detectives began a months-long investigation involving interviews, search warrants and surveillance footage from that morning, police said. They concluded that what Withington called luck stemmed from someone’s costly mistake.
“The bank deposit bag had been inadvertently dropped on the ground outside of the bank, which was then picked up by Withington,” police said.
It’s unclear whether the employee who dropped a bag of nearly $5,000 of the town’s tax money was disciplined, or if the cash Withington found was deposited in the right account. Donna Pellitteri, Trumbull’s tax collector, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Withington was interviewed by police and acknowledged he was at the bank on May 30 and had picked up the bag of cash.
“If I knew I was wrong in the first place, I would have given it right back,” he told Hearst. “I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong.”
He was released from custody on Friday with a promise to appear in Bridgeport Superior Court on Sept. 5.
It’s unclear whether Withington has repaid the funds, and neither he nor the police have publicly addressed it.
Withington told local media he does not have a criminal record and was “not looking for trouble.” But he maintained he did nothing wrong when he picked up thousands of dollars in cash outside the bank, telling Hearst, “It’s not like I stole something.”
“I found money, and now it’s probably going to cost me money,” he said.
(c) 2023, The Washington Post · Timothy Bella
Only looters may steal. Finding money is theft….
From the headline I honestly thought this was a Pidyon Shevuim campaign.
This is not a Jewish case. Had this been a Jewish case and a Jewish court, according to halachah one who finds money in a public area, and it is not inside of a purse/wallet, may keep the money for himself. This applies, irrelevant of the amount of money found and applies, even if the money was found in a majority Jewish area.