Cleveland Rocks! Cigar Shop Owner One Grand Richer

Today, someone walked into Mauricio Hanono's cigar shop in Little Havana and handed over $1,000.

No, it wasn't us on the hunt for an under-the-counter Cuban.

It was Florida CFO Alex Sink, who paid Hanono a visit to return a 1934 $1,000 bill (good luck trying to use that at Publix) owned by Mauricio Hanono. The publicity stunt, er, generous gesture, at Absolute Cigar Shop was a preview to the upcoming Unclaimed Property Auction, which will be held in Ft. Lauderdale this weekend.

See, the Cleveland (Grover, that is) was supposed to be part of the auction, but Hanono put the kibosh on those plans by claiming the money. Hanono said he gave it to his son when his son got married, but there was some miscommunication about the safety deposit box rent. Sink said they use a variety of methods to try to track people down, but it was a simple name match in the phone book that led them to Hanono.

"The banks have the safety deposit boxes... over a certain period of time, if the rightful owner doesn't pay the box fee, then the bank drills the boxes and sends all the contents up to Tallahassee," Sink said of the process. "We do the inventory and then we start trying to find the rightful owners... we can't continue to keep items or we would have 40 years worth of items, so every year we auction off the items."

So if the owner of the item tries to claim it after it's been auctioned off, are they just SOL?

"We keep a record of how much cash was taken from the sale of that item," said Sink, "and it would still be their money."

You might not be able to scoop up Hanono's cash anymore, but there will be 40,000 other unclaimed items up for grabs on Saturday - with a preview on Friday - at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Ft. Lauderdale. Items include everything from a 13-karat diamond ring to political buttons from the '50s and '60s.

We're hoping someone forgot to claim a '67 Jag. Hunter green would be nice. Oh, and convertible. Not that we're picky.

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