Who has never imagined what they would do with a tidy sum of money found by chance? This is what happened in May 2021 to two couples while walking their dog, in the municipality of La Londe-les-Maure. On communal land located in the hamlet of Valcros, they found a metal box containing two bundles of 500 200 euro notes in a trash bag. The dogs had scratched the garbage bag half dug up by the weather and made their masters happy. According to the newspaper nice morning, the happy treasure hunters finally returned the money to the police station the next day. Subsequently, an investigation was opened to determine the origin of the tickets. While witnesses had been interviewed, searches carried out and samples taken for DNA, the investigation yielded nothing. No valid clue as to the origin of the loot having been drawn, the public prosecutor of Toulon decided to close the case on June 7, 2023.
200,000 euros each
It seems that luck has once again smiled on the lucky dog owners. The latter decided to submit a request to the town hall in August 2023 in order to recover this sum. Unfortunately for them, article 716 of the Civil Code provides that in this type of situation, the sum is distributed between those who discovered the treasure and the owner of the land on which it was found, here the town of La Londe. “These discoverers have demonstrated honesty, it is to their credit, but these are funds which have become public through the discovery. There is no reason in the general interest to renounce this sum for the community”specified the mayor of the city François de Canson to nice morning. 200,000 euros were therefore paid to La Londe. As for the couples, it remains to be seen how they will share the remaining 200,000 euros. A chance that allowed others before them to earn money. Thanks to chance, a punter had pocketed a million euros after having replayed the 100 euros he had just won in the Loto, or when a family from Pas-de-Calais pocketed 13 million euros in August 2023 after changing their numbers for the first time in years.