A construction worker in southern Brazil has been reunited with an entire month's wages after a stranger spent nearly two weeks hunting for him, according to reporting by Good News Network.
Pedro Moro discovered the equivalent of about US$219 in Brazilian reais lying in a public plaza in the city of Ibiraçu on August 28. No one nearby appeared to be searching for it. What Moro did not know at the time was that the money represented the full monthly salary of 24-year-old Matheus Reginaldo Celestino, a young laborer who had withdrawn the funds from the bank to cover needs for his daughter.
Celestino had passed through the square while heading to a barbeque and only discovered the loss once he arrived at his destination.
Moro initially lingered in the plaza in case someone returned to claim the cash. When no one did, he brought it home and launched a campaign across social media and other community channels, asking residents whether anyone had misplaced money.
With the cash still unclaimed by September 3, Moro went back to the square and approached nearby businesses in search of security camera recordings that might have captured the moment the money fell. One establishment provided clear footage showing who had dropped it. Moro circulated the images online and asked the public to help identify the young man.
By that point, the search had become a topic of widespread conversation in the community. Moro told the Brazilian media outlet UOL that residents greeted him everywhere with the same question about whether the owner had been found, adding that he was pleased to have located the person and to have fulfilled his duty to return the money.
Celestino eventually came across the Instagram post and contacted Moro. Before handing over the cash, Moro conducted a brief identity verification, asking the young man to state how many 10-, 20-, and 100-denomination notes the stack contained.
Celestino told UOL that he had already written off the money as gone, and that he was grateful everything worked out in the end.
The episode places Ibiraçu among a growing list of communities where found cash has been returned intact, including a South Carolina restaurant owner who discovered $12,000 in an old cabinet, a Texas man who found more than $128,000 atop a bank's ATM, and a Florida man who spent days locating the owner of $30,000.