Man Finds $7.5 Million in Storage Unit He Bought for Just $500 From Storage Wars Star Dan Dotson


Talk about a return on investment!

While attending a charity event on November 1, Dan Dotson — who operates his own auction house and frequently stars in Storage Wars on A&E — says he was approached by a woman who told him a family friend had recently purchased a storage unit he had auctioned off and had quite the story to tell in the days that followed.

Turns out, the man, who was a friend of the woman’s husband, found a mysterious safe in the storage shed that held the surprise of a lifetime.

“The first person they called to open the safe, I guess, couldn’t, or didn’t, so they called a second person,” Dotson recalled in a video posted to Facebook on November 5. “When that person opened it up, inside the safe — normally they’re empty, but this time it wasn’t empty— [and] it had $7.5 million cash inside.”

While it was a potentially life-changing discovery for the unit’s buyer, it was also meant someone out there had just lost an enormous amount of money. But, fortunately, this story has a happy ending for everyone involved.

Dotson revealed that when the original owners of the unit found out that it had been sold — with their cash still inside — they quickly contacted their attorney to negotiate a deal with the new owner.

First, the original owners offered $600,000 to return the money, but then settled on a deal that saw the man return the money for a $1.2 million reward. While he didn’t keep the full amount, the man still came out with $1,499,500 in profit on a measly $500 investment.

Dotson, and his wife, Laura, discussed what they would have done had they been the ones to come across that huge sum of cold hard cash.

Dan Dotson and his wife, Laura
Dan Dotson and his wife, Laura

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“I don’t feel like it’d be clean money,” Laura said in the couple’s Facebook video.

Whether he would take the $1.2 million reward, Dotson said he would, partially because he wouldn’t want to find out how far the former owners would go to get their money back.

“I wouldn’t ask a damn thing,” he explained. “$7.5 million is a lot of money… but that’s a lot of running, too.”