Theft by finding
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the legal term. For the work by David Sedaris, see Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977–2002).
Theft by finding occurs when someone chances upon an object which seems abandoned and takes possession of the object, but fails to take steps to establish whether the object is genuinely abandoned and not merely lost or unattended before taking it for themselves.[1] In some jurisdictions, the crime is called "larceny by finding" or "stealing by finding".[2][3]