Honest probation officer returns $223,600 dropped from armoured vehicle

Last week, an armoured car in Louisiana dropped almost a quarter of a million dollars in cash.

If someone excited to get rich instantly had found it, this story would have ended very differently.

Fortunately, Louisiana probation officer Jessica Luebke was leaving her office on Wednesday afternoon and spotted the clear plastic bag that had fallen from the passing armoured car.

Inside the bag was $223,600 in cash.

Her first instinct was an honest one.

"I turned around immediately as soon as it registered what it actually was — that it was a huge bag of cash," she told Fox News. "I just called Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office straight away."

Luebke and a co-worker then secured the cash and waited from deputies to arrive.

Pam Laborde, spokesperson for the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections, said that the bag of $20 and $100 bills fell from an armoured car en route to the bank from the Boomtown Casino in Harvey, about seven kilometres away.

When the armoured vehicle's crew realized the small fortune had fallen from the back of the vehicle, they retraced their steps and found Luebke and police officers with the bag of cash.

The sheriff's office returned the money to the armoured car's crew and it was promptly deposited at Capital One bank.

"It would have caused a lot of trouble if somebody else had found it," Department District Administrator Jon Reeves told the Times-Picayune.