By Gabriel Elizondo in Maracangalha, Brazil
It was like a script from a Hollywood film. A small plane carrying millions of dollars in cash crashes right in the middle of a poor village in a remote corner of the world.
But this was no movie - this is what actually happened in the north-eastern Brazilian village of Maracangalha, and the event has since sparked a missing money mystery that provided an unhappy ending for the villagers.
The mystery began last year when a small plane, operated by a private security company on behalf of a Brazilian bank, transported about 5.56 million Reals in cash, the equivalent of about $3,300,000, across Brazil's Bahia state. The plane encountered mechanical difficulties and crashed near the village, killing the three people on board and releasing a cloud of banknotes.
Three million dollars is a lot of money for anyone, but even more so when you consider many of the people of Maracangalha do not have running water and earn less than $100 a month as labourers on nearby farms.
When a local radio station reported the incident, people descended on the village in droves almost immediately, collecting as much of the money as they could find.
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Posted 07/09/2008 10:28 pm
I really never have cause to complain about my life here. 
