Jordan teen hailed after returning $17,000 of lost cash to owner

A young Jordanian boy has been hailed as a hero after he returned a huge sum of money he found in a market to its rightful owner.

Mahmood Arabiyat, a teenager from the small town of Salt in western Jordan, stumbled on a bag containing 12,000 Jordanian dinars (nearly $17,000) at the town’s main market earlier this week.

The secondary school student handed the bag over to his father, a local trader who earns less than $15 a day according to the campaign group No to Discord Between Jordanians and Syrians.

The pair then set out to find the rightful owner of the bag and managed to return the cash to him on Wednesday.

Arabiyat was hailed as a hero by many in Jordan, and was interviewed by national radio on Thursday morning.

The head of the radio station, Mohammed al-Afuri, later told local news site Assabeel that the act represented the boy's "strong moral character".

"He has behaved with the utmost graciousness, and he deserves to be celebrated."

Translation: This boy’s father should raise his head high. This is the true spirit of Salt and of Jordan

Salt is a lower-middle income town in Jordan, where local charities on Wednesday distributed blankets to poorer families suffering in a bout of cold weather.