Japan to replace damaged money found by Vietnamese scrap vendor
The Japanese central bank has agreed to replace all the damaged money that a Vietnamese scrap vendor accidentally found in a speaker sold to her as junk, local media reported.
Huynh Thi Anh Hong, 36, will get more than one million Japanese yen (US$8,340) as the Bank of Japan has finished assessing the 124 mutilated notes and agreed to replace them for her.
Previously, Hong changed 400 intact notes worth around 4 million yen and received a total VND691 million (US$31,000).
Hong, who moved to Ho Chi Minh City nearly two decades ago, found more than five million yen in a small wooden box hidden inside a speaker that she had bought from a stranger in late 2013 for VND100,000 (US$4.63).
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| Huynh Thi Anh Hong in a photo taken before she received the money returned by the Ho Chi Minh City police in June 2015. Photo: Pham Huu |
She had kept the speaker and broke it open in March 2014 to recycle the metal.
Japanese bank notes flew out of the box and people in the vicinity tried to grab some.
Soon strangers lined up outside her door, all demanding some of the money.
Hong was afraid and called the police in Tan Binh District, where the woman from the central province of Quang Ngai has been living for nearly 20 years.
The police confiscated the money and issued a note asking the owner to come and claim the money on April 28, 2014.
Soon before the deadline, a woman came to the police and claimed the money belonged to her South African husband. But the police investigated and then rejected the claim.
They announced Hong would get all the money.