Subject: Woman gave life savings the boot

A Romanian woman nearly lost her family's life savings when she threw out her husband's old boots.

The wife, named as Roxana T, 35, from Alba Iulia, was cleaning her flat for Christmas when she found the boots in a wardrobe.

She threw them out with the rubbish - without realising her husband Calin T, 40, had hidden the equivalent of £37,000 pounds in one of them.

The couple was saving money to build a new house and were keeping it inside their apartment because they didn't trust the banks.

Calin said: "We had a previous bad experience with an investment fund which went bankrupt and prefered to keep the money in house.

"I changed the hiding place without making sure my wife knew exactly where that was. I told her but she may not have been paying attention."

After a one week investigation, police discovered the money had been found by local woman Maria Boti, 54, who had already used it to buy a house.

She had salvaged the boots from the bin with the intention of selling them second-hand at a local flea market.

The house deal was cancelled and the purchase price - £27,000 - returned to its rightful owners.

Ms Boti had spent the rest on Christmas shopping and faces three months in jail for failing to declare that she had found the money.