Man finds safe containing $7.5m in storage unit he bought for $500

Not a bad haul for $500

One lucky bargain hunter got the shock of their lives when they bought a storage unit for $500 - only to find a safe with $7.5m inside.

The unbelievable haul was revealed to Storage Wars star Dan Dotson and his wife, Laura.

A woman approached Dotson while he was at the Cars, Stars and Rock N' Roll charity auction event with this remarkable story.

Dotson relayed what the lady told him:

"My husband works for a guy and he bought a unit from you for $500 and it had a safe in it.

"The first person that they called to open the safe couldn't, or didn't.

"They called a second person and when that person opened it up... inside the safe they're normally empty, but this time it wasn't empty, it had $7.5 million cash inside."

This is obviously a life-altering sum of cash, but the question remained who's money this originally was.

Luckily, Dotson revealed that the original owners of the unit had contacted their lawyer when they found out the lot had been sold with their cash inside.

Their lawyer negotiated with the new owners to settle on a deal that saw the man return his found fortune for a princely sum of $1.2 million.

This obviously is a considerable sum less than the original $7.5 million he'd happened upon, but is still a pretty decent return for a $500 investment.

Dotson also agreed this was a good deal, and speculated that the money inside the safe probably wasn't 'clean'. He said he wouldn't want to turn over the stone of finding out how the original owners came by this huge wad of cash.

He said: "$7.5 million is a lot of money... but that's a lot of running, too."