$330,000 found in Japan vacant house demolition

TOKYO - Agence France-Press

Hürriyet photo

Construction workers dismantling a vacant house in rural Japan discovered $330,000 cash stuffed in a tin box underneath the living room floor, press reports said Wednesday.

The house, in a farming town on the northern island of Hokkaido, had been empty since its elderly male owner died two years ago, the reports said.

The cash -- about 2,600 notes each worth 10,000 yen ($127) bundled together or put in envelopes -- will be handed over to the dead man's relatives on the main Japanese island of Honshu, the reports said.

"Because the cash was discovered at an individual's house, it is clear whose money it is," a spokesman for the local police station said by telephone. "So we don't treat it as a lost-and-found case."