This week in Philly history, longshoreman Joey Coyle finds $1 million on a South Philly street

The methamphetamine was wearing off as soon-to-be South Philly legend Joey Coyle sipped coffee on his Front Street steps on the morning of Feb. 26, 1981.

He was waiting on the mailman, who was carrying his $700 paycheck, but his next binge couldn’t wait.

Coyle persuaded two young neighbors to drive him to his drug dealer’s house, but the dealer wasn’t home. On the way back, Coyle was riding shotgun and scanning the South Philly sidewalks for metal scraps when he spotted it.

Sitting wheels-up on Swanson Street near Wolf was a yellow metal storage container. Its contents would become his salvation, and then his downfall, a bizarre saga splashed across newspaper pages and the silver screen.

Coyle opened his door and righted the container. The lid flaps split, and two canvas bags labeled “Federal Reserve Bank” spilled out.

“Oh, man!” Coyle said, according to an Inquirer report. “What am I into now?”

He had hit the South Philly lottery: money that literally fell off a truck.

The haul: $1.2 million, more than $4 million in 2025 dollars.

The 28-year-old, down-on-his-luck longshoreman immediately bought more meth.

He set about mindlessly giving away his newfound fortune. He handed $400,000 to a mobster whom Coyle foolishly hoped would break down the $100 bills into smaller denominations and return it.

He shared his good news with anyone he saw — friends, family, a random bartender. He offered $100 to, and promised to pay off the mortgage of, strangers in New Jersey after he inadvertently stumbled into their house.

After four sleepless days, he headed for New York.

Coyle drove up with an old friend, got a hotel room, and started stuffing envelopes with cash. He taped envelopes inside his socks and hid the rest in the room. They visited a French restaurant and a nightclub, but on their way back, neither man could remember the hotel’s location.

So they found another hotel and reserved another room. But Coyle, high and drunk and paranoid, slept in a random car in the parking garage instead.

The next morning, they found the original hotel, grabbed the money, and headed to John F. Kennedy International Airport. Coyle was arrested on theft charges as he was checking in for a flight to Acapulco, Mexico.

The police were able to recover $1,003,400.

His lawyer cleverly convinced jurors that temporary insanity, and not greed, had motivated Coyle’s actions.

The story became a movie script, but that also turned out badly.

Three weeks before the movie’s nationwide release in September 1993, 40-year-old Joseph William Coyle died by suicide in his home.

And on its opening weekend, the watered-down, Disney-produced movie grossed less than half of what fell off the truck.