HE’S a battler from Sydney’s west, a factory worker whose dream is to win a share in Lotto and take his wife on her first overseas holiday.

But Ghazi Adra could also be the state’s most honest man — finding $50,000 cash on a train seat, then handing it straight to police.

The money — a large bundle of $US100 notes stashed inside a cooler bag — would have been enough for Mr Adra to retire immediately and whisk his wife away on her dream trip.

But the 68-year-old insisted the cash had to be returned to its rightful owner. All he wants is a thank you.

“That sort of money would have changed my life but it wasn’t mine. If that money was meant for me, it would have come to me in the right way,” Mr Adra said.

When he noticed the blue cooler bag left behind on a Penrith-bound train last Friday, he thought it was someone’s lunch they had forgotten earlier in the day.

“So I picked up the bag and took it with me, thinking there might be a phone number in it or some ID,” Mr Adra said.

After arriving at his modest Mt Druitt home, he put the bag aside and didn’t even look inside it until after dinner.

Expecting to find a stale sandwich or a piece of fruit inside the cooler bag, Mr Adra instead found a large yellow envelope containing five neatly-wrapped bundles of $US100 notes.

“I couldn’t believe it. I counted the first bundle, $10,000, and the next, $10,000 . . . until $50,000,” he said.

“I thought it must have been fake money, you know, like Monopoly money. But there was a withdrawal receipt with it from St George Bank, so I thought it has to be real.”

He was holding more money than he earns in a year as a storeman at an electrical factory, but Mr Adra never once thought about keeping it, telling his family: “We must go to the police station and hand it in.”

Even the policeman on duty at Mt Druitt was surprised by his honesty.

“The officer said to me, ‘I can’t believe you are handing this in, you are a very good man’,” Mr Adra said.

Superintendent Wayne Cox said the owner of the money, an Asian woman, had a “legitimate but personal” reason for carrying such a large amount of cash and was grateful to Mr Adra.

“It does show there are people in our community who do the right thing,” he said.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/reasons-why-ghazis-a-good-bloke/story-fn6b3v4f-1225993850224