NEW YORK — James Kane has used a powerful magnet to fish all manner of junk from New York City waterways, but he says the stacks of $100 bills he pulled from a safe were something else entirely.
Kane's girlfriend, Barbi Agostini, was recording last Friday as he pulled a slimy safe out of a lake in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, famous as the location of the 1939 and 1964 World's Fairs, and extracted bags of waterlogged, gunk-covered Benjamins from inside it.
''Oh, that's money,'' Kane said in the video of the discovery. ''Oh, it is! Stacks of bills, dude!''
''Oh, my God!'' Agostini says.
The couple estimates that the safe contained as much as $100,000, though the bills were partly decomposed and stuck together.
The bills featured the 3D security ribbon that indicates recent vintage, but the safe bore no clues to a rightful owner.
Kane and Agostini said they called the police to report their discovery and were told there was no evidence of a crime.
''They gave it to us, as, I guess you call it a finders keepers thing,'' Kane said.