An Orlando bank lost her jewels. She sued and lost. And then they turned up -- at an auction [View all]

It had been three years since Orange County teacher Jennifer Morsch’s lifetime of valuables mysteriously disappeared from her safe deposit box at a Chase bank on Dr. Phillips Boulevard.

About $100,000 in jewelry, gold coins and cash were gone. A federal lawsuit Morsch filed against Chase questioning the reliability of bank safe deposit boxes had come and gone, with Chase winning the suit based on a statute of limitations provision.

Morsch, an elementary school special education teacher, was out of options and out of hope.

Then she got a text last Thursday afternoon that would rip back open the safe box snafu she had tried to leave behind. It set her on a path back to the items she believed were long lost through a series of coincidences — and more than just a little dumb luck.

“It wouldn’t hurt to check it out,” came the message from a friend, along with a link to an auction that the Florida Department of Financial Services’ Unclaimed Property Division was holding called Florida Treasure Hunt. The department auctions unclaimed property from banks, but also offers consumers the option to reclaim their property if the see it among the items.

The news of the auction had run on WKMG Local 6 news with a photo of a gold choker necklace with five round-cut diamonds that looked an awful lot like one of the items that Morsch had lost in her safe deposit box.

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/os-bz-bank-jewelry-update-20190828-4arnfeygbbez3liifwrg2vm4lq-story.html