Sometimes the owner is told they have just arrived on easy street (like the bloke with a metal detector who found a Roman helmet worth more than $4 million) while others are informed their Ming vase was actually made by Frank Ming, the retired stationmaster from Scunthorpe.

We all have yarns that become part of family folklore (indeed my own father nearly started a war in Pakistan over a wayward soccer ball, but that is an entirely different story).

Which brings us to the most unfortunate John William Henderson, a gentleman formerly known as William Marijancevic, who appears to have been duped by a fantastic fable told around the kitchen table.

Hendo had the misfortune of being caught up in a raid by Cairns police on room 241 of the Reef Palm Motel way back in April 2002. Police were in the midst of arresting a woman with two plastic bags containing around 60 grams of cocaine when Henderson poked his head around the corner.

Police immediately found he was carrying a bum bag containing $5320. The curious cops checked his hire car outside and found 23.3 grams of cannabis plus a sports bag with $592,600 in $50 and $100 bills.

For some reason they jumped to the conclusion he was a drug dealer and seized the lot.

Henderson argued that while he had an extensive rap-sheet this time he was an innocent bystander with a perfectly good explanation for the cash.

And this is it.

While he is a colourful crook, with 56 convictions in Queensland and Victoria for violence, drugs, theft and receiving stolen property dating from 1963, his family history is even more intriguing.

Sure, a couple of relatives are well known to police and have entertained detectives with improbable alibis over the years. One was caught tunnelling into a Melbourne bank where a policeman (accidentally) stood on his nose as the suspect peeked through the broken floor - a painful example of a Rozzer on your Schnozzer. The accused later argued he was actually a good samaritan who entered the tunnel to persuade a friend not to break into the bank. He was acquitted.

According to Marijancevic legend their forefathers were Croatian Gypsies who became confidantes of Russian nobility during the 1917 Revolution.

"My mother and father told me stories when I was growing up about how my great-grandfather helped transport members of the Russian royal family across borders and received the jewellery as a reward," Henderson explained.

In other words, it was a case of the Tsar saying Ta to his Grandpa.

Around December 1996, while visiting his father in the Victorian hamlet of Picola, Dad produced a box from under his bed containing earrings, a bracelet, a necklace and a brooch - all gold and diamond encrusted.

Then Franjo Marijancevic instructed, "look after your family."

Knowing the history of Gypsies, tramps and thieves, the dutiful son placed the antique jewellery in an ANZ Collins Street bank safety deposit box in his wife's name.

He did not tell his sister and one of his two brothers he was holding the family fortune to be distributed at a later date. He reasoned that silence, like a rare royal Russian bracelet, is only valuable when it is golden.

After his father's death five years later he showed his siblings the hidden treasure and they decided it should be valued for sale.

They chose a city jeweller because, Henderson would later claim, his shop was the nearest to the Collins Street bank where the gear was held.

In December 2001 the jeweller sketched the items, estimating a wholesale value between $600,000 and $700,000 with a retail price of $1 million. This was a pleasant surprise as Henderson assumed the price was between $10,000 and $20,000.

Within weeks a man called Daniel, who Henderson says he didn't know, rang about the jewellery. How he knew it was for sale or found the phone number is one of those mysteries within a mystery. So let's not get bogged down in details.

Meanwhile, Henderson and his siblings decided to invest in the Queensland real estate market, choosing a Kuranda property.

He travelled to Queensland several times to negotiate with a local who stood firm on the price.

In February 2002 Henderson and his wife flew to Cairns for further discussions and fortuitously it coincided with Daniel re-emerging to buy the jewels for $620,000.

When the man-without-a-surname produced his chequebook Henderson demanded cash. On March 12, 2002, Daniel fronted with the money in a fruit box (naturally).

Henderson and his wife counted the cash and wrote a receipt but unfortunately didn't keep a copy. He jotted Daniel's surname and telephone number on the nearest piece of paper, which happened to be a $50 note.

Sadly the details were lost when police seized the money. So while Henderson remembers the date of the deal, the name of the dealer, like some members of the Russian royal family, managed to escape.

The Hendersons wandered to banks and a casino to exchange many of Daniel's $50 notes for $100 ones before placing the loot in the safety deposit box.

Cynics would claim this was a laundering operation but he explained he found the cash "far too bulky". He had a fair point as the fruit box had to be filled with 12,400 notes, or a single stack 135 centimetres high.

Flush with funds, Henderson wanted to seal the deal over the Kuranda property and set up a meeting with the local seller in a Cairns shopping centre coffee shop just weeks after Daniel delivered. He planned to produce the cash to negotiate a discount on the property price.

This may seem a strange way to do business but Henderson was never big on paperwork, which may explain his failure to file a tax return for nearly 10 years.

He was eventually hit with a back tax bill of more than $1 million, a judgment he found most unfair.

He would tell the tax authorities that while he was on a social security pension he enjoyed a remarkable run at the track, the casino and even won around $70,000 on Powerball.

He supplemented this income by investing in the apparently lucrative bric-a-brac market, although the only records he could produce was for the $8500 sale of an antique clock.

While he was explaining himself to the Tax Department his lawyers were arguing their way through a series of hearings all the way to the High Court that the seizure of the Cairns cash was a wicked injustice.

It would take four hearings, 12 years and thousands of words but Henderson's argument was simple. The money was not tainted and not even taxable as it came from "longstanding family heirlooms".

The trouble is judges tend to be pedants when it comes to pendants, particularly those of an antique Russian variety.

It quickly became clear there were as many holes in Henderson's story as in Nicholas II after he was shot post Revolution.

First, you might remember, Henderson said when he received the jewellery in 1996 he placed it in the ANZ bank safety deposit box.

He also said he chose a nearby jeweller because it was around the corner from the bank.

Bank records showed his wife rented the safety deposit box well after that date. Indeed they sourced such a box on March 13, 2002, the day after the mysterious Daniel with his mysterious fruit box turned up with the mysterious $620,000.

It was also months after they had the longstanding family heirlooms valued, which knocks down the claim they picked the closest jeweller available.

The jeweller gave evidence in an early hearing that he remembered the Henderson jewels  because it is "rare to see items of such quality". He opined they were of "Central European Origin."

The jewellery, he recalled, was in a red velvet bag inside a red box. Very royal indeed.

As the case dragged on through different courts the jeweller could not be cross examined due to alcohol related brain damage.

Sadly he could no longer tell the Crown Jewels from a Crown Lager.

Luckily he still had the sketches of the jewellery he valued back in 2001.

The State gave the sketches to Brisbane valuer and jeweller Kenneth Penfold for a second opinion.

Mr Penfold concluded that far from being antique contraband the booty was manufactured after 1950.

So unless the Tsar stumbled on a time machine the romantic Gypsy Marijancevic yarn was a fabrication.

Eventually the High Court ruled Queensland authorities were right to seize the cash as an asset of crime and awarded costs against Henderson.

Which left him madder than Rasputin when the final answer to his appeal was - Nyet.