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People in Tokyo found $29 million in cash lying around last year and walked it to the police. That's a record, and it's the fourth year in a row they've set one. Japan figured out how to make that happen on purpose. It's also why an Apple store there can leave a brand new iPhone sitting loose on a table with a crowd of strangers all around it. The trick is that Japanese law pays you to be honest. Turn in a lost wallet and you're entitled to 5 to 20% of what it's worth when the owner picks it up. If nobody claims it within three months, the whole thing is yours. Of that ¥4.5 billion, about ¥3.2 billion made it back to the people who lost it. A law professor at Michigan, where I went to school, actually tested this back in 2003. Mark West dropped wallets and phones around Tokyo and New York on purpose and counted how many came back. In Tokyo, 80% of the wallets and 88% of the phones got turned in, while New York managed about 10% and 6%. West put most of it down to the law and the habits it drills into kids from a young age. Then there's the koban. Japan has around 6,000 of these tiny police boxes, so when you find something there's almost always one a short walk away. They hold the item for a month in case the owner comes back looking, then ship it to a central lost and found that logs everything into a database anyone can search. A New York City Council report back in 2007 basically called the city's version a dead end. My favorite stat is the umbrellas. Tokyo residents turned in 338,000 lost umbrellas in one year. About 1% ever got back to their owner, because who goes to the police over a $3 umbrella? People kept bringing them in anyway. And they leave money on the table all the time. Last year ¥700 million, roughly $4.5 million, went to the Tokyo government because the owner never showed up and the finder never came back to collect it. That's cash strangers could've legally pocketed, and they just never came back for it. West did point out the catch if you want to copy this. A lost and found this good eats up a ton of police time, and Japan can spare it because its murder rate is one of the lowest on earth. So that untethered iPhone is sitting on top of a law from 1882 and a police force with enough free time to chase down your wallet.