{"id":151350,"date":"2025-11-24T15:14:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T15:14:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/151350\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T15:14:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T15:14:13","slug":"is-this-for-real-cleaner-finds-20k-hidden-in-old-chair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/151350\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Is this for real?’: Cleaner finds $20K hidden in old chair"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Charlotte Cook of RNZ<\/a><\/p>\n

A cleaner tidying up some dusty old chairs at a Wellington property has stumbled across the most “insane” thing she’s ever found – $20,000 cash.<\/p>\n

Loll, co-owner of Massive Property Services, said the retro chairs had been sitting in the basement for more than two decades.<\/p>\n

It was her stepdaughter’s first day on the job and she was vacuuming them when she realised one of the cushions was lumpy.<\/p>\n

“I sorta joked with her and said, imagine if it was some money, and we laughed, and then she said to me, if it’s a rat you have to get it!”<\/p>\n

Loll said they opened the cushion and pulled out an old plastic bag full of $100 notes, with a note saying it was “checked” in 2001.<\/p>\n

“We [were] just sort of like, shocked… oh my God, both had our hands over our mouths and we were just sort of silent for a second, just staring at each other like, is this for real?”<\/p>\n

They sat down on the floor in shock, she said.<\/p>\n

“My stepdaughter was like, ‘this is like a movie!'”<\/p>\n

They contacted the property management company who returned the cash to the owners.<\/p>\n

They were “absolutely shocked” and had no idea about the money, Loll said.<\/p>\n

“It was so overwhelming even for them… it was their mother’s money.”<\/p>\n

The owners were grateful for Loll and her stepdaughter’s honesty, she said.<\/p>\n

The pair had joked about whether they were being pranked, and filmed by secret cameras.<\/p>\n

They didn’t consider keeping the money for themselves, but Loll did buy a Lotto ticket.<\/p>\n

“I went and bought one straight away, but I didn’t win,” she said.<\/p>\n

“It really has put me on a bit of a high for a few days… for one thing, finding it, I’ve never held $20,000 in my hands before.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Charlotte Cook of RNZ A cleaner tidying up some dusty old chairs at a Wellington property has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151351,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-151350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}