By Larry Oakes, Star Tribune (Minneapolis) –
MINNEAPOLIS — A Moorhead, Minn., waitress has won her battle to keep $12,000 a customer gave her but police confiscated as suspected drug money, her attorney said Thursday.
The Clay County attorney’s office decided to return to Stacy Knutson the three wads of cash a customer left in a box on a table at the Fryn’ Pan in Moorhead. Her attorney, Craig Richie, said he was on his way to the county courthouse to pick up the cash on her behalf.
“This is a woman with five kids who has been a waitress for 18 years,” Richie said. “She and her family were praying and asked God’s intervention to touch these people’s hearts, and that’s what happened. It was about God providing for her.”
Knutson recently filed a lawsuit saying that after a customer left a takeout box at her table, she followed the customer to her car, but the customer told her to keep the box.
She said that after taking the box back inside and finding the large rolls of cash, she notified police. Officers told her to wait 90 days in case someone claimed the money, but authorities later decided to hold the cash longer because a drug dog detected drug residue on it.
Richie said he would have argued in court that police experts say almost all paper money in circulation has drug residue on it.
