Advertisement

Good Samaritan's genius ploy to return lost wallet

Losing your wallet can be a nightmare and for many, it’s rarely returned.

But thankfully for one fortunate Brit, the person who found his wallet went above and beyond to return it to its owner.

Tim Cameron was cycling home from his London office on Monday when he lost his wallet containing his bank cards and driver’s licence.

When realising his wallet was missing, he quickly logged into his bank account to see if his cards had been used.

Remarkably however, his balance had gone up.

With little personal information in the wallet to contact Mr Cameron, the person who had found his wallet conjured up an ingenious plan to get in touch via his bank account.

The only way he could get a message through to Mr Cameron was by leaving him a series of short messages via bank transfers to his account.

Depositing the smallest amount possible, he ended up sending payments of one pence (1.9 cents) four times to fit in his message.

“Hi, I found your / wallet in the road / 07XXXXXXXXX / Text or call!” the combined messages read, which appeared in Mr Cameron’s online statement.

Immediately calling the number, he was relieved to find out a man had his wallet 20 minutes away.

A file picture of a black leather wallet on a path.
The lost wallet was swiftly returned thanks to its finder's quick-thinking. Source: Getty, file.

“He was a nice bloke. He was going to hand it in to the police, and he had tried to find me on Facebook. I was going to go to the police after I had retraced my steps but this happened first,” Mr Cameron explained to the Evening Standard.

He cycled round to his home and gave him a bottle of red wine as a thank you.

Mr Cameron shared a screenshot of his bank statement to Twitter explaining the course of events.

His tweet quickly went viral and garnered thousands of comments from users impressed with the man’s ploy.

“This took creativity. Love seeing these acts of kindness,” one person wrote.

“So clever and committed to doing the right thing,” another said.

Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@yahoonews.com.

You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter, download the Yahoo News app from the App Store or Google Play and stay up to date with the latest news with Yahoo’s daily newsletter. Sign up here.