A question of Integrity

[Quantum Quack]

A question of Integrity and $800.00

A little story as part of the question:

Years ago we were flat broke, I had no cash in my wallet and I was walking with my fiance along a river park in a major Australian city.

We decided to sit down by the waters edge and there exactly where we wanted to sit was a wallet.

I sat down next to the wallet and picked it up and looked inside for it's contents. Much to our amazement there was $800.00 AU in side it in cash.

Now $800.00 is enough to pay nealy 8 weeks rent or allow for food on the table for many months. Suffice to say, it would have been enough to pay all our immediate bills.

We also found inside the wallet a cedit card and German drivers licence. Obviously it belonged to a German tourist and probably a back packer.

The question is:

Given the cuircumstances would you pocket the money and throw away the wallet or would you attempt to find it's owner via the Police or other means?

Keeping in mind that the chances of finding a Back Packer in a large capital city is quite remote.

A small explanation of your reasoning would be appreciated although not necessary.

 

[one_raven]

My Godmother had her wallet stolen (or pehaps lost, since it wasn't "snatched, it just "disappeared") in NYC years ago.
A week or two later she got her wallet, fully intact (wallet, credot cards etc.), except the cash was missing.
The cash was the least of her worries, it is a HUGE hassle going through the trouble of cancelling all the cards and having them replaced and replacing the driver's licence etc.
She has always thought that if someone found it and mailed it to her, they deserved to keep the cash as a reward, and if they stole it and returned it, then they redeemed themselves, at least slightly, in her eyes and she forgave them. She figured they were likely an otherwise honest person down on their luck and they needed it more than she did.

I'm not sure where I stand on it.
I guess it would all depend on my desperation at the moment.
The more desperate I am, the more easily I would be able to justify it to myself.
I DO know that if I decided to keep the cash, the LEAST I would do is mail the wallet and the rest of its contents to the address on the license.

Question:
Why do you assume it was "probably a back packer"?
By making the assumption it was a backpacker, it sounds like attempting to justify keeping it because they MUST be hard to find, anyway.
It could have been a businessman, a vacationer staying in a nearby hotel, just about anything.
How hard it may or may not have been to find them in YOUR city, has no real bearing on the situation, anyway, in my opinion.
You had their German address, and could have used some of the cash in the wallet to pay for mailing the wallet back to their house.

 

[Ophiolite]

I found a wallet stuffed full of cash and credit cards in a taxi in Singapore. It was night and I thought it was my own. When I got home I realised my mistake. It clearly belonged to an English businessman. Initially I tried phoning a number of hotels in the area where I had got the taxi, but that was unsuccessful. In the morning I took it to the police. Apparently about ten minutes after I left a very worried gentlemen turned up enquiring after it. He later phoned me with profuse thanks.
If I had been desparate for money would my actions have been the same? I like to think so.

 

[Xerxes]

Finding a wallet on a bench in a popular, inner city park is a good sign that it hadn't been sitting there for very long. And since Germans are easy to track, I would've first-looked around for for a few minutes
-if that failed, try contacting one of the numbers in his wallet
-bring it to the police.

The amount of money is irrelevant. I don't take things that don't belong to me.

 

[whitewolf]

Since it is a question of integrity specifically, I stress you should have returned it. That money could have been his means of survival for the next few days or a ticket home (I'm disoriented with prices, but you can correct me). If you know someone's name, you can track them anywhere. I'd hand it to police, to make sure the real owner got the wallet.
What would happen if you didn't return it? You'd be in debt, and you'd get a job, and eventually you'd crawl out of it. Being stuck in a foreign country with no money is far worse, since there are much fewer options and great difficulties in getting around.

 

[Quantum Quack]

It is rather amazing even from a point of view regards peoples suspicions.
In the thread starting post I had deliberately avoided stating what I actually did with the wallet. I wished not to prejudice other peoples responses to this thread, but after reading the above responses on a number of occassions posters have implied that I kept the money.
1)

Since it is a question of integrity specifically, I stress you should have returned it.

2)

You had their German address, and could have used some of the cash in the wallet to pay for mailing the wallet back to their house.

Please accept of course that I am in no way offended by these assumptions, however it is interesting how often we can inadvertantly assume or appear to assume the worst of someone and fail to 'give them the benefit of the doubt'

What happened from the moment we saw the wallet:

I looked over at my partner and said "Shit, someones in trouble" and it wasn't just the owner of the wallet.

Over the next 30 minutes we discussed the ethics of what we were experiencing sitting there in the hope that the owner would return after realising he had lost it.

We sat their speculating on the owners identity and how we could find him.
And you know in the end it came down to the one simple question:
What would you like someone else to do if they found your wallet as we had?
or
"Do unto others as you would have done to you"

The contents of the wallet showed quite clearly that the owner was a backpacker. The fact that the wallet was there to be picked up suggested that it was recently lost.

Some of the rational went like this:
To work your arse off to save $800.00 is something we hadn't done. It wasn't ours to keep no matter how desparate we were. We both knew no matter what, the owner would get his wallet, our main concern was that he was able to enjoy his holiday and not have it spoiled. And besides I said to my fiance we do have a train ticket home...[as a joke]

Ok, so the next question is "What to do?'

I saw a couple of policemen on pushbikes and I thought I would ask them what I should do. We had already discounted the notion of going to all the Back packer Hostels in search of the owner as being futile.

So the funny thing was I approached these policemen and wanted to surrender the wallet. The Policemen initially said that because they didn't have the right paper work they could not accept the wallet. Ha....absurdity rules.

As we were trying to work out what to do we the policeman included could see in the distance a young lady running across a major bridge, maybe she had to run 500 meters and eventually she got to our little gathering.

Breathlessly she asked in reasonably good English whether we had found a wallet, and I asked her for the owners name to which she gave with out hestitation.

The police and I agreed that her claim was legit and gave her the wallet to whch she thanked us profusely and quickly left.

The quandery of what to do when fate places you in a position of trust yet every where you look people doubt your integrity can place a person in a most interesting situation.

The police couldn't take the money but couldn't leave the money. Which sticks out as a good example of how suspicion can be so damaging.

We were desparate for money but somehow managed to survive. We are still desparate [3 years later, due to serious health issues] for money and somehow we will continue to survive, but at least we have a clear conscious in our poverty. Poverty of money but a wealth in our integrity. And I would go on to suggest that most people are also of integrity if given half a chance.

 

[one_raven]

QQ,
I didn't assume you kept the wallet.
The reason I said that was because mailing it back to them was not an option on your list.

 

[Quantum Quack]

ha..point proved......I assumed that you assumed that I assumed.....ha
We new that if all else failed we could contact the owner my mail confirming his address etc etc......but a more immediate solution had to be found if we could find it. Even giving it to the police would mean that he may not get it back....and would the police go to the trouble of sending it to teh guys home....I don't think so, reasoning that to verify his address etc would cost more than the money involved in the wallet....so we were sort of stuck......

 

[vslayer]

i voted for keep the money and send the wallet plus credit cards back, but after reading the posts above i think i wolud probably give it back, money included.

this reminds me of what my economics teacher said after presenting the class with this same issue, he said that if someone had found $100 of his lying around, he wolud give them half, because he no longer had it, so should it get returned that would not be a refund in proper context,
the finder had the good will to return what he no longer considered his, so they deserve to be rewarded, obviously you are not going to give them all of it, but 1/2 wolud be fair in my view

 

[Quantum Quack]

so they deserve to be rewarded

This is where it gets sticky.
Who is deciding on the reward?
Who decides whether to give a reward and how much that reward should be etc etc?

Upon presentation of the wallet intact the owner of the wallet has an opportunity to express his/her gratitude. However if that opportunity is missing because the returner has already decided his reward then is this really a reward or is it a payement for honesty?

Personally I would Like to see a law put into place that states that the finder of lost property is entitled to 10% of Market value, or some other arbitary system, similar to the finder keeping the lot if the owner is not found by police type rule.

 

[Quantum Quack]

Say we chnage the circumstances a little and place just the money in a bundle with out the wallet on the grass near the river.

So we sit down [flat broke] and there is this bundle of $800.00 cash with out any ability to determine ownership. What would you do?

Personally I would be very tempted to keep the money as finding the owner would be very difficult for sure. However the law here in Oz states that the money should be handed to poilce and three months [I think] must be allowed to pass before the finder can claim the money as his own. Thus giving the original owner a chance to claim his lost property. [This does BTW seem to be the fairest solution, but damn it ...you have to wait 3 months!!!!]

I guess what I am really wanting to discuss here is just how vexatious areas of ethics can be. Integrity comes at a price. At what amount of money does the picture change?

If the amount was $10,000 or $50. At what value is there a difference?
If you work for a Bank, even the smallest denomination of currency is held accountable.

Vexatious for sure....

 

[laughing weasel]

My ethics would shake out like this if there were less than 100.00 I would keep the loot and mail the wallet back if I found the wallet by myself. If I found a wallet with more than 100.00, I would have to turn it in to the police because that represents to great of a loss for me. If I were with my fiancé, I would definitely have to turn the wallet in because even if we were both dishonest crooks I would not want to be dishonest together if that makes any sense. I think that that would set a very bad precedent for any future relationship.

 

[Ophiolite]

I guess what I am really wanting to discuss here is just how vexatious areas of ethics can be. Integrity comes at a price. At what amount of money does the picture change?

About twenty years ago when I was managing my employer's operation in an African country I was in a position to walk away with around 1 1/2 million US$ with virtually no chance of being prosecuted. Based on this experience I think the price of my integrity would be around 10 million.

 

[Quantum Quack]

Ophiolite, well done. How much is a good nights sleep and a life with out the fear of eventually getting caught .....worth? Dare I say $10 million