A man who found more than £6 million in a storage unit he bought for £400 thought all his dreams had come true - until lawyers came asking for the money back.
Any fan of Storage Wars will know that it's luck of the draw when it comes to exploring the storage units, with some containing a multitude of hidden treasures while others are packed to the brim with rotting furniture and useless papers.
The host of the US TV show, Dan Dotson, knows this all too well, but he had no idea he'd sold one of his most valuable lockers ever until he was approached by a stranger some time later. Hear his encounter below:
Dotson was at a Cars, Stars and Rock N’ Roll charity auction event in Indio, California in 2018 when he heard the news, and later recorded a video of himself explaining the situation.
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In the clip, he said: "This lady comes up to me and she says, 'I want to tell you this story. My husband works for a guy and he bought a unit from you, and it had a safe in it...'
"Inside the safe, normally they're empty, but this time it wasn't empty. It had $7.5 million (£6.1m) cash inside the safe."
Dotson told The Blast the unit had been bought for just $500 (£411), meaning they found 15,000 times what they forked out.
We can only imagine the celebrations that took place after the discovery, but things quickly turned sour as the buyer was contacted by an attorney who represented the original owners of the storage unit.
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Dotson recalled how the attorney offered the buyer $600,000 in exchange for the money back, but the buyer obviously wasn't willing to let go of their millionaire status too easily. To be fair, that would be a hard thing to let go of.
After they declined the offer, the attorneys came back with another number, this time in the millions.
"They doubled it to $1.2 million and they gave them $1.2 million in exchange - I guess [the buyers] gave them back $6.2 million," Dotson said.
The host went on to ask viewers whether they'd do the same as the buyer and give the money back, or 'keep it and run for the hills'.
According to The Blast, Dotson’s co-star, Bargain Hunters Thrift Store owner Rene Nezhoda, expressed belief the money could be mafia or cartel-related because 'if you find money like that, there’s probably a reason it isn’t in the bank'.
Topics: Money, TV and Film
Emily Brown