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What if you found an unmarked envelope full of money in your mailbox? Would you keep it?

On March 20 and 21, exactly 30 households were faced with this very dilemma as an unknown person deposited a total of 760,000 yen (US$7,420) in the mailboxes of an apartment complex in Ikoma City, Nara Prefecture. The largest sum found in a single mailbox was 137,000 yen (US$1,339). Just 10 days earlier, mysterious envelopes were deposited at an additional 30 homes in Kawasaki City, 486 km (300 mi) away. This time, the envelopes contained gift certificates with monetary values ranging from 5,000 yen (US$48) to tens of thousands of yen (hundreds of US dollars).

If this sounds like easy money to you, you might be surprised to learn what half of the residents chose to do with the cash.

As explained by the Mainichi newspaper, nearly half of the people who received money in Ikoma City chose to surrender the cash to the police, saying it was “creepy” to receive the unexplained envelopes. The money will be treated as lost-and-found, meaning the unknown person who delivered the envelopes is free to claim the cash if they have a change of heart…they’ll just have a lot of explaining to do.

Of course, this isn’t the first time an unknown charitable person left an anonymous donation. Several cases of mystery packages filled with cash left by Tiger Mask have been reported in the news for the past two years and another person dressed as evil villain, Colonel Muska, left backpacks outside an orphanage. We wonder if this time, the unknown person (or people) were actually trying to do a good deed, but landed up creeping out local residents instead.

Source: Mainichi via BBC News
Image: Wikipedia