Weird But True

Firefighters battling Brooklyn home blaze discover heaps of hidden cash

Forget the stock market, this is the hottest place to stash your cash.

Firefighters cut through a ceiling while battling a house blaze in Brooklyn early Thursday and bundles of hidden cash rained down on them, sources said.

“It was buried treasure basically,” said an FDNY source who had been briefed on the unexpected bounty.

“It just kept falling out.”

The firefighters had arrived at the three-story brick row house on East 57th Street in Old Mill Basin just after 2 a.m. to put out the fire, which had started on the first floor, the FDNY said.

When they discovered that the flames had snaked their way into the ceiling, they cut through the overhead drywall to stamp it out, the FDNY source said.

Then the cash, all wrapped in plastic bags and tinfoil, started landing on their heads.

“It was a ton of cash. It just fell right out of the ceiling, pretty cool,” the source said.

“It was in bundles. It wasn’t like in one solid brick. It just kept falling out.”

The cash — which was saved from burning to a crisp in the fire — could total as much as $1 million, said the source, who was told it came from the life-insurance policy of a resident’s deceased husband.

There were so many bundles — all filled with new hundred-dollar bills — that they needed to be weighed to estimate their worth, the source added.

Steve Natkowitz, 74, lives next door and was shocked to learn about the hidden ceiling stash.

“You’re kidding me!” Natkowitz exclaimed.

The scene of a house fire at 1190 East 57 Street in Flatlands, Brooklyn.
The scene of a house fire at 1190 East 57 Street in Flatlands, Brooklyn.Gregory P. Mango

The neighbor said that the entire home had been renovated about a year and a half ago, but the hard work all went up in smoke during the blaze.

He had his doubts about whom the hidden hundreds belonged to.

“She was a seamstress, and he was a cook in a restaurant,” Natkowitz said of the building’s longtime owners. “I don’t see it coming from either of them.”

“I saw [the son] this morning, and he didn’t seem upset. He seemed normal. He just said, ‘Thank God nobody was hurt.’”

The cash bundles were returned to a resident who claimed they were theirs, but the NYPD came and took them back so that police could voucher them, according to a source.

The NYPD could not immediately confirm the sum of the money.

Reached by phone, a relative of the resident said there was “like $20,000 in tinfoil” found in the ceiling but then insisted there was no money at all.

“Whatever they think they found, if they found money and they want to give it to us, give it to us,” the relative said.

“If you find anything, give it to us! Call me!”

Additional reporting by Kevin Sheehan