A home improvement contractor cracked through the wall while doing a bathroom remodeling job to find $182,000 hidden there in during the great depression by a wealthy businessman of the day.

But the story does not have such a happy ending. It turns out that the current homeowner, Amanda Reece, was having a bit of financial trouble and wanted to hold on to most of the find in her house.

Reece, a mortgage loan officer, testified that she’s buried in debt, in part because of the real estate meltdown. She’s loaded with credit card debt, and properties she bought in 2003 and 2004, near the peak of the real estate boom, have lost value.

A bank foreclosed on a Cleveland house she owns with $60,750 due on a $62,300 mortgage that she took out a week after the money was found.

Reece also said that she spent about $14,000 on a trip to Hawaii with her mother and sold some of the rare late 1920s bills on eBay and to a coin dealer. She said about $60,000 was stolen from a shoe box in her closet, but testified that she never reported the theft to police.

In the end, the honest contractor received very little of the found money and the decedents of the man that placed the money in walls to begin with, got even less.

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