Hijacked cash

Hey, this is America. It’s OK to like money. It’s annoying when people pretend they don’t.

Take Brian Ingram of Mena, Ark., who was lucky enough to find $5,880 of the loot snared by famed hijacker D.B. Cooper in 1971.

Ingram, then 8 years old, was on a camping trip with his family when he found three bundles of deteriorating $20 bills on the shores of the Columbia River near Portland, Ore., in 1980.

First of all, D.B. Cooper was not the fake name the hijacker gave when boarding. It was Dan Cooper, but an early misidentification of him as D.B. Cooper has stuck. So there it is; another consequence of errors in journalism.

Second, I don’t know why Ingram’s family didn’t have to give back the money they found, seeing as it was definitely matched by serial numbers to Cooper’s loot. (Again, Dan’s, not D.B.’s)

For some reason, the FBI kept only 13 of the bills. (Isn’t 13 an unlucky number? Doesn’t that make it less like the feds will find the hijacker?)

Whatever. Ingram’s folks let him keep the loot, which was nice, and now he wants to cash in, which is understandable. Only that’s not what he said when he announced that the weathered bills would be put up for auction.

“My wife and I have discussed it over a few years, and we just decided we wanted to share it with people,” said Ingram.

Clang!

Wrong, Brian. You don’t want to “share” the money with anyone. You want to make more money off of it.

If you truly wanted to “share” it with someone, you would donate it to something like the International Hijackers Hall of Fame, if there was such a thing, which there isn’t.

I hope the Ingram’s get a good bid for Cooper’s cash. After all, they say they want to use the proceeds as a college fund for their kids.

That’s nice. Just stop pretending that this is some kind of selfless, noble gesture.