James Cain
Appearances
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
The initial call is, and we're magnet fishing. I said, we just found a safe with a ton of money in it.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
There was a small investigation. They wanted to see how we got in. Questions were asked. Yeah. Took like an hour.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
The bill's date, I think the only date I could read was 2013. 13, yeah.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
They probably were in a rush. Imagine how much money you need to take out already to just leave two giant stacks in there and say, let's go. We have no time.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
I always told officers, I said, I'm not going to deny someone if they prove that it's their money. I wouldn't be like, no, you can't have it. No, dude, if it's yours, just let me get like $1,000.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
We always bring Ziploc, so we put it in the Ziploc bag and sealed it and put it in our backpack.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
The bags started getting hard and swollen, you know. The bills started turning to rock. So that's the point where I was like, we got to go.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
I would say the year before, we were maggot fishing in Central Park near the Bethesda Fountain. There's like a drop off of the water right there. And we found cell phones galore. I would say one day we found maybe 12 cell phones. And in the back of one of the phones was money behind the case. I guess people store money in their cell phones. And it turned out it was $200.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
So I went to our local bank, and they said you could exchange it in the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington, and they do all free money exchanges.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
Now we found out Megabus from 12th Avenue and 34th Street will take you right there in about four and a half hours.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
We jumped in a car and... Actually, we couldn't find the engraving and printing building. It was a little weird to find at first. Got to the building eventually and went inside. A very secure location, believe it or not, where they make the money for the country. Pretty secure.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
And the other wild thing is they literally said, where is the safe? So there was more money that we didn't take that was just these tiny little flakes and sand, and it was water. And they said, you should have collected everything, the sand, the water, the mud, in the safe and brought us everything because they will issue a bill.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
I don't know how they do it, but they can find the bill even if there's a tiny bit of money only.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
The official estimation is 50,000 to 80,000 only. Only. One of the people in the office said it could be even more because the water does something to the money where it compacts it.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
Believe it or not, it was my first time going there, so we visited all the main areas, like the monument and some of the main buildings that are there. I saw the White House for the first time, and I saw spots to magnet fish. I don't know. There's some places right by the monument. I don't know if we try. The Secret Service might tackle us, but I want to try it one day.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
My stepson and I, during COVID lockdown, we saw something called magnet fishing on YouTube, watched a few videos.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
No, they explain that. There is no taxes taken out of that. Because it's just an exchange from damage to working.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
I couldn't do it without Barbie, honestly. Barbie's, you know what I mean?
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
So magnet fishing is where you take a really strong magnet, you tie it on the end of a rope, and you throw it in the water. Most metals are going to be attracted to that, and you take it out of the water, it being garbage or treasure or other things. Basically, you're taking metal out of the water.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
Found a $20 magnet about six inches wide and an inch in thickness, weighs maybe a pound. Put it on the rope, went to our local pond in Jamaica. Queens, by the way. I wish it was Jamaica Island.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
And we found some... toenail clippers and bottle caps, and that was super exciting.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
I would say within a month we started getting the big stuff. A full-size Kawasaki motorcycle, scooters.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
I'm going to say it, but I guess obviously I don't know if we could put it on or not, but we found a... It was in Cheapside Bay. We found a bag of a sex bag, we're going to call it. Handcuffs, pleasure toys. Yeah, thumb cuffs. I don't know if we can put that on or not, but that's a strange one.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
I didn't know either. They're police-issued cuffs you wear along with handcuffs for very dangerous people that just locks your thumbs together. And I tried it, so it locked my thumbs together, and it wasn't nice.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
and some magazines with bullets still in it in a park in Jamaica. And I was excited, but also very nervous because I had no idea how it's going to go, you know. Obviously the firearm was in the water because somebody did something really bad with that. So I was petrified. And then we go ahead and contact the authorities.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
The first confusing thing is, do you call the police department or do you call 911? He decided on 911. I have to explain to them what magnet fishing is. So they hear a guy on a bridge with a gun. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not standing on a bridge with a gun. I am on a bridge with a gun, but I found it.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
And I was so nervous, I was like, I don't want to, when we handed it in to the police department, I was like, I don't want to follow up, I don't want to know.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
I played enough video games to see what those were. They were World War II grenades.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
I tell people, you can't imagine. Anything you can think of is going to be in the water. And I think you would be shocked of the things that are disposed of in the bodies of water around the world. And specifically in New York City is unbelievable.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
It's a hollow sound. And my experience with finding metal boxes, it's always a freaking safe.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
Maybe a foot and a half wide, weighed about like 30 pounds. It's a cheap Amazon safe that you can get for like 40 bucks or something like that.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
Stuck my hand in. I felt what I thought was Ziploc bags, and it turns out it definitely was not Ziploc bags.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
Completely soaked and slimy as the mud you could ever, the blackest of black water. And I peeled it back, and I just lost it.
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
Oh! Oh, it is! Stacks of bills, dude! Hundreds! Oh, my God! Oh, my God! And then I started banging in on the floor, and the door popped open. So it wasn't so much, it wasn't really a safe-safe, you know what I mean?
Criminal
Guns, Grenades, and $100,000
I'm estimating like $100,000 at least in the safe. The first second we saw all that money, and it's hard to explain, but the first feeling I had was fear. Because, you know, fear of as in not everyone forgets their stacks of $100 bills in the safe before they throw it in. I don't know who's doing that. So we contacted the NYPD and no one believed us.