CDG Unwittingly Gives Homeless Man €300,000 Christmas Gift

A vagrant, known to regularly sleep at Roissy Airport outside of Paris, appears to have hit the jackpot when an open security door allowed him to carry away a fortune in ill-gotten loot.

Authorities searching for a homeless man suspected of stealing cash from Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG) might want to check with the Hotel Ritz. The previously down on his luck man in his mid-fifties is believed to have walked away with approximately €300,000 after discovering the cash behind an inexplicably unlocked security door at France’s busiest airport.

“This is indeed extremely fortuitous,” a source said to be close to the investigation told Le Parisien. “This homeless man benefited from a combination of circumstances to land himself a huge Christmas present.”

According to the newspaper, the door to the area where large amounts of cash are sometimes stored while awaiting pickup by armored truck, normally requires a keypad code to access, but in this case, it appears that the door was inadvertently left unlocked. Officials were notified of the security breach when an alarm was triggered, but by then two large bags of cash had disappeared.

Security video later revealed that the apparent culprit was the vagrant known to frequently sleep at the airport. The footage is said to have captured the surprised suspect scavenging in bins near the security door before realizing that the door was open and discovering the unbelievably large cash prize on the other side. The cameras then reportedly recorded the man hastily dropping several items that he had just collected outside, disappearing into the room and some time later emerging with two large bags of money.

By the time border officers arrived on site, the newly-flush homeless man had left the scene of the crime with his unlikely haul. So far, his “lucky streak” continues and he remains at large.