A Canadian man will receive an $11,000 consolation payout after losing a long legal fight over a much larger stash of cash—about $850,000—discovered hidden beneath a garage in Ontario, while the federal government will keep the rest.
The money was uncovered back in 2009, when police searching a rural Thunder Bay property for an illegal handgun dug up a Rubbermaid container buried under the garage’s dirt floor. Inside were bundles of Canadian bills totaling roughly $850,000. Officers also found the U.S. equivalent of $11,000 tucked inside a heating vent and nearly $7,000 more in a suitcase. The property’s tenant, Marcel Breton, was charged with offenses linked to possessing the proceeds of crime, but he was eventually acquitted after the search warrant was ruled invalid.
What happened to the money, however, became a separate battle. On Monday, Ontario’s Court of Appeal ruled that the government is entitled to keep the bulk of the haul, agreeing with prosecutors that the cash could not be shown to have come from any lawful source. Judges pointed to several red flags: the unusual way the money had been bundled—30 tightly packed bricks marked “5” or “10,” each holding exactly $5,000 or $10,000—and the predominance of $20 bills, a denomination experts testified is frequently tied to drug transactions.
It took stunned officers 18 hours to count the cash, some of which was described as moldy, damp, and stuck together. Investigators also turned up 111 grams of cocaine and digital scales in the garage. Court records note that Breton reported no income to Canada’s tax agency from 2001 to 2008. He told the court he had innocent explanations, claiming the money could have come from a cash-based repair business or legitimate gambling wins, but those arguments were rejected by the trial judge in 2023 and again by the appeals court.
One unusual twist: Breton will get back the $11,000 found in the heating vent. The judge concluded that this portion was clearly his personal money, kept in a location close to where he lived. A CBC report from 2014 also noted testimony from an ex-partner who claimed Breton once said he had hidden another $70,000 in his mother’s attic.