An Israeli woman mistakenly threw out a mattress she said had almost $1 million inside, setting off a frantic search through tons of garbage at a number of landfill sites on Wednesday.

The woman told The Associated Press that she bought her elderly mother a new mattress as a surprise present on Monday - and threw out the old one.

The next day, she said, she remembered that she had hidden her life savings inside the old mattress. "I woke up in the morning screaming, when it hit me what happened," said the Tel Aviv woman, who asked not to be identified.

She went to look for the mattress, but it had already been hauled away by garbage collectors, she said. Searches at three different landfill sites turned up nothing.

[b]Opinion[/b]

This is absolutely bizarre. How I wished l was close by l would have "returned" at least 2/3 of the money back to her. Am l not honest enough ?

Believe it or not this actually happened on an episode of spongebob squarepants called "The Lost Mattress".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuQzE308YCQ

tunku:

Believe it or not this actually happened on an episode of spongebob squarepants called "The Lost Mattress".

life does immitate arts sadly

Illiteracy at the highest order. Why stash that amount of money in the mattress? what if the house got burnt?
i just pray they recover the mattress cos the old woman might just have an heart attack.

[size=15pt]I just learnt that many people are queuing up in Israeli embassy to obtain visa. Don't quote me pls [/size]

jay bee:

Illiteracy at the highest order. Why stash that amount of money in the mattress? .

Where ever she kept it,its all about risk management.
Would it have been better if she had invested in the capital market with it
or the banks and helplessly saw it meltetd down with toxic assets?

stashing cash in your mattress is just plain stupid. If you want to feel safe just put it in a savings account. That money isn't being used for idiotic investment and if the bank does go down most countries insure your deposits. If it was gold coins she was stashing away that I would understand, but it was cash. What if the Israeli economy suffers hyperinflation, either way it will still wipe out her savings. Since paper money isn't pegged to anything anymore this was just stupid period and would have been better being kept in a bank.

Kx:

Where ever she kept it,its all about risk management.
Would it have been better if she had invested in the capital market with it
or the banks and helplessly saw it meltetd down with toxic assets?

Not everyone invest their life savings in capital market.
An old woman that's not bothered about increase of her life savings should just store the money in a bank vault or better still a savings account if she want some sort of interest.
I reiterate that storing large amount of money at home is just plain stupid and she is no different to Nigerians that do the same. Only that in naij's case their life savings is a sweetener for hungry robbers.
My mum was once stupid to have kept up to 2Mil at home back in 94 and yes she got robbed.