$100,000 cash found in backpack in California restaurant

Los Angeles: The owner of a Burger King in San Jose, California, made a whopper of a discovery in his restaurant last week: a backpack stuffed with $100,000 (Dh367,000).

A restaurant employee first spotted the backpack on Wednesday while cleaning a booth, owner Altaf Chaus said.

Hours later, the backpack remained untouched and no one had come into the restaurant to claim it.

The employee notified Chaus, who then peeked inside the backpack in the hopes of finding out who owned it.

“I opened the bag and was like, ‘Whoa, that was a lot of money,’” he said.

Stacks of cash held together by rubber bands filled the backpack.

Chaus said he didn’t think twice about calling police to report the cash-laden backpack. The bag’s owner, he reasoned, probably worked hard to earn it.

“That was very big experience for me,” he said. “It was shocking.

“I have never seen that much money.”

Why the backpack had so much cash in it remains a mystery.

Inside the bag, police found a Wells Fargo Bank slip showing that someone withdrew $200 to $300, leaving only $7.95 in the account, Chaus said.

San Jose Police Sgt. Heather Randol said investigators are looking for the backpack’s owner and holding the cash in the department’s found property lockup.