A man reportedly found a safe filled with $7.5 million in cash inside an abandoned storage unit he purchased from “Storage Wars” star Dan Dotson for $500. The man ultimately settled for a $1.2 million reward from the unit’s original owners.
Dotson said that the man attempted to get a locksmith to open the safe. “The first person that they called to open the same could not or did not,” he said. The TV auctioneer said the second locksmith the unnamed man called managed to get the safe open.
“Inside the safe—normally they’re empty—but this time it wasn’t empty,” Dotson said. “It had $7.5 million dollars cash inside the safe.”
After the money was discovered, the original storage unit owners reached out to the new owner through their lawyer, Dotson said. The original owners offered the new owners $600,000 and later $1.2 million to have the money returned to them.
The new storage unit owners took the original owners up on their offer and agreed to the $1.2 million in exchange for the remainder of the money.
Dotson and his wife, Laura, then debated what they would do if they discovered the money.
Laura Dotson said there could be issues with finding a safe with millions of dollars. “I’d feel so worried. I don’t feel like it’d be clean money,” she said. “If they were offering it to me then, I would say alright then, they washed it, they made it clean and I’ll accept that $1.2 million.”
Dotson, meanwhile, said he “wouldn’t ask a damn thing” about the $1.2 million offer. He said that $7.5 million was a lot of money but was also “a lot of running, too.”
The storage space was auctioned off because the original owners failed to pay for their unit’s rental fees. “I don’t think you’d forget you had $7.5 million,” Dotson said.
His wife said that the massive find was surprising but not that uncommon. “They moved away, perhaps a person went to jail. Who knows what it was?” she said. “But you now it happens all the time. This is the modern day treasure hunt.”
The name and location of the lucky treasure finders was not released.
