- James Kane and Barbie Agostini have been fishing with magnets since the pandemic
- The couple has found everything from jewelry, coins and even weapons.
A New York City couple got about $100,000 in cash from a safe they pulled from a lake while “magnet fishing” in Corona Park.
To accomplish this unique feat, James Kane and Barbie Agostini attached a neodymium magnet (which costs just $21.99 on Amazon) to a fishing rod and pulled the old safe out of the depths of the water.
And at first, it was a mundane discovery because, as Kane said NY1: “We have found many safes before, this is precisely what a magnetic fisherman does.”
The couple explained that the safes they find are usually empty, except for a few plastic bags that once contained cash. But after opening this one, it was clear that they had stumbled upon a good score.
‘We took it out and there were two wads of fucking hundreds. Big stacks,” Kane said.
James Kane, an avid magnet fisherman, is seen pulling an old mud-covered safe out of a lake in Corona Park in Queens.
Kane holds up a soggy stack of hundred-dollar bills from the safe.
At first, Agostini thought Kane was joking, but when she saw the bills inside plastic bags, she said “she had gone crazy.”
Unfortunately for them, the water managed to get inside the bags and damage the hundred dollar bills.
It’s unclear if they’ll be able to redeem the bills, but there’s a chance the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing will redeem your money.
If more than 50 percent of the currency is identifiable, a legal holder of the notes “may receive a refund for their full value,” according to the PEB website.
Kane told NY 1 that he always wanted to become “a treasure hunter,” and when he and Agostini got bored during the pandemic, they decided to take up magnet fishing.
“We call it the poor man’s scavenger hunt,” Kane said.
The couple created a YouTube channel last June called ‘Let’s get magnetic‘ where they post their best casts from various bodies of water throughout the New York City area.
Kane and his girlfriend, Barbie Agostini, have been fishing with magnets since the pandemic to free themselves from the boredom of confinement.
Kane is shown holding a small gun that he took with a magnet from a park in New York City. The couple later called the police, who took the gun for safekeeping.
In a recent videoThey found multiple watches, pieces of jewelry, old New York City subway tokens, and even a small gun.
The couple said they investigated and came to the conclusion that finding and keeping things like guns and safes full of discarded cash could potentially get them into legal trouble.
Therefore, when they find objects that could be related to criminal activity, they have become accustomed to calling the police to make sure they are not disturbing anything.
Kane said the New York Police Department conducted an investigation into the safe and found there was no problem.
“Obviously it was a safe that was stolen, but there was no crime with us,” Agostini said. “There were no IDs, there was no way to find the original person in the safe, so they said, ‘well, congratulations.'”
The couple also said that NYPD top brass were on the scene, including captains, and that many officers were excited to see what they had found.
Kane said some police officers with 18 years under their belts told them they had ‘never heard of anything like this.’