What happened to ‘finders keepers’? Police are hunting for a man who picked up $30 off the floor of a Georgia Walmart

Unfortunately, it’s not always that simple.

On Aug. 19, the police department of Albany, Georgia shared a grainy photo on Facebook of an older man in a Walmart pushing a cart. In the post, they asked for the public’s assistance in identifying him, writing that “an individual dropped $30.00 on the ground while shopping. This individual picked up the money and did not turn it in to the employees.”

Below the post, more than a handful of commenters question the police department for seeking out this man who has done something they deem harmless.

“This is a joke, right?” one commenter wrote.

“Whatever happened to finders keepers” said another.

Indeed, what happened to it? There’s actually more to it than a common turn of phrase.

‘Finders keepers’ and the law

Much like many commenters, you might be thinking, if this man found a fairly small sum of abandoned cash on the ground, then it’s no harm to keep it.

But, under Georgia Code § 16-8-6, “keeping property you know or learn is lost or mislaid without making reasonable efforts to return it to the owner is considered the criminal offense of theft of lost or mislaid property.” In other words, Georgia does not take “finders keepers” as a sufficient answer to why someone might keep the money