Colleen and Jim Mesler moved into a rented apartment on July 1st 2007. But in early December, the fridge’s self-defrosting freezer wasn’t working right, so Colleen decided to clean the refrigerator and made one crazy discovery.
“I pulled this tray out. It was wrapped in tin foil and plastic, but it was moldy,” Colleen said of the package she found.
“I said, ‘Why don’t you throw it out?” Jim said. “I thought it was old meat, stale meat.”
“But it didn’t smell like bad meat,” Colleen said. “I pulled it apart and found $100 bills. I was more shocked. ‘I’m not throwing this away,’ I thought.”
They’ve spent the day trying to separate the bills apart with a pair of tweezers.
“About $2,000 of it was torn up, or we couldn’t get the mold off it,” said Jim.
They took it to the M&I Bank, hoping to exchange the moldy, broken-up bills for fresh ones. The M&I bank employee advised them to call the police.
Unfortunately, the previous renters of the apartment had been charged with drug trafficking. In a February raid, police uncovered crack cocaine, marijuana, a scale, and other piece of evidence that pointed to drug sales. About $1,100 was also found on purpotrators.
The Meslers are still waiting the official word on whether they would be allowed to keep the money.
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