Man finds envelope with $10,000 in cash inside purse left on subway platform, turns it in to police

A New York City man is being praised for doing the right thing after he found $10,000 in cash inside a purse left behind on a subway platform and turned it into police.

Richard Taverna was waiting for the 1 train on New York City’s Upper West Side neighborhood on Thursday morning when he spotted a blue Chanel bag on the platform, WABC reports.

“I picked it up just to see if there was maybe some kind of information, identification inside that I might be able to could get in touch with the right person,” Taverna told WABC.

Inside, Taverna says he found a note written in Russian. While he looked to see if there was an agent at the station with whom he could leave his discovery, he had no such luck. He took the bag with him instead, WABC reports.

Taverna later found an envelope inside the purse. It contained “a big stack of money”: one hundred $100 bills, totaling $10,000.

After that discovery, he made the decision to go to the police. He explained to WABC, “Someone lost $10,000 —they’re probably going through a lot of duress.”

Police told WABC that the purse had been reported missing earlier on Thursday by a woman who lives in Manhattan and was leaving for vacation in Russia when she lost her purse. She filed a report at the same police station where Taverna later dropped off the bag.

Taverna says he imagines others in his position would have acted as he did.

“I think it is something most people would’ve done. I don’t think I did anything extraordinary,” he said.

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