What would you do if you found a metal box filled with precious gems? Would you report it to the police, or would you just cash it out and buy yourself a new house?
A man who stumbled upon $430,000 worth of jewels in the French Alps just got paid a hefty $215,000 reward after he selflessly turned the jewels in several years ago.
The mountaineer was hiking on a glacier near Mont Blanc when he stumbled upon the metal box in 2013, CNN reported at the time. Inside he found all kinds of precious stones such as sapphires, rubies and emeralds.
But he didn't keep the gems. Instead, he reported them to the authorities in France, and police ultimately spent eight years deciding what to do with the treasure.
“The stones have been shared this week,” Eric Fournier, mayor of the nearby village of Chamonix, told the AFP.
Fournier added that the value of the stones was split up and the original climber was given half the cash because of his “integrity.”
The box is thought to have been thrown from an Air India flight that crashed in the area in 1966. That flight went down en route from Mumbai to New York, and bits of debris have occasionally turned up on Mont Blanc in the years since.
Another plane from India also went down in the area in 1950.
Although the climber had a chance to keep all the gems, he told Le Parisien newspaper earlier this year that he didn’t “regret having been honest.”
He won't be buying himself a new house, but he did say that he plans to renovate his apartment with the payout.
This article’s cover image was used for illustrative purposes only.
A French Man Found $430K In Jewels In The Alps & He Got A Big Reward For Turning Them In
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