WATCH: US rabbi finds $98,000 in Craigslist desk, and returns it

After finding cash behind drawers, Connecticut rabbi promptly picks up phone to woman who sold him desk, who had forgotten where she put her inheritance money.

By TAMARA ZIEVE
Rabbi Noah Muroff 370 (photo credit: You Tube screenshot)
Rabbi Noah Muroff 370
(photo credit: You Tube screenshot)
A young rabbi from New Haven, Connecticut hit the jackpot when he discovered a bag containing $98,000 in a desk that cost him just $150 on Craigslist, a story that has crept from the local to the global media this week, despite having happened a couple of months earlier just before Rosh Hashana.
Rabbi Noah Muroff, who has been dubbed a "Good Samaritan" by local reporters, was quick to return the money to its rightful owner, who it transpired had hidden her inheritance money so well that she had forgotten where she put it.
Rabbi Muroff and his wife only discovered the money because the desk was "a fraction of an inch" too wide to fit through the door of their office and the couple consequently had to dismantle their new purchase. Pulling the desk apart, the Muroffs found behind the drawers, a plastic bag containing the cash.
"In the bag... it looks like a one hundred dollar bill,"the rabbi told New Haven news channel News8 WTNH.com. "We open it up and it's full of cash. And we counted up and there's $98,000 cash sitting in the bag."
"Right away my wife and I sort of looked at each other and said we can't keep this money," he continued.
"The most important thing in life is to be honest," Muroff told the reporter, explaining that he promptly picked up the phone to break the good news to the woman who sold him the desk. Muroff told the media he knew the money belonged to the woman, identified only as Patty, since she had told him that she had bought the desk from Staples and assembled it herself.
Patty was reportedly "speechless" and wrote in a thank you letter obtained by CNN: "I do not think there are too many people in this world that would have done what you did by calling me."