Woman throws out million dollar mattress

An Israeli woman has sparked a desperate search through landfill sites around Tel Aviv after accidentally throwing away a mattress containing $1 million (approximately £700,000) in cash.

The woman, known only as Anat, had bought a new mattress for her mother as a surprise and thrown out the old one. It wasn’t until the following morning when her mother awoke screaming that she realised something was wrong. The elderly woman had been squirreling her savings away inside the mattress for years, and now it was heading for the garbage heap in Hiriya.

By the time the woman reached the site, the mattress had been moved on with up to 3,000 tons rubbish to a larger site. Speaking to Army Radio, the manager of the tip claimed that his staff are helping them in their search, and claimed that ‘Anat’ appeared “totally desperate.” Not surprising, given that the site receives over 2,500 tons of new rubbish every day.

The money is thought to have represented the entirety of the elderly woman’s life savings, but she has asked not to be identified and has refused to give further details that might aid the search. It is thought that she fears treasure hunters will reach the mattress before she does. Ask why she had chosen to stash her cash in a mattress rather than in a bank, she referred vaguely to a bad experience she had suffered in the past, but refused to go into detail.

At the time of writing, the Israeli police have stated that no report of the incident has been filed, but a picture of the woman searching a landfill has appeared in Yediot Ahronot, a daily newspaper published in Tel Aviv.