This story comes from the stranger than fiction file.

Beavers in Greensburg Louisiana are proving that money laundering doesn’t always pertain to criminals.

A bag of bills stolen from a casino was used by the eager beavers along with sticks and mud to create a humble, and by beaver standards, expensive abode.

“They hadn’t torn the bills up. They were still whole,” said Maj. Michael Martin of the sheriffs office.

The money was part of $70,000 to $75,000 taken last week from the (un?) Lucky Dollar Casino in Greensburg.

Deputies searched for the money for days until a lawyer, hoping to make a deal with prosecutors for a client, called and said the money had been discarded in the creek, Police Chief Ronald Harrell said.

Officers searched the creek during the weekend of November 13-14th. They found one money bag right away and located a second downstream against the beaver dam.

The third bag of dough couldn’t be found, Martin said, so deputies started breaking down the beaver dam to drain the pond it was holding. That was when they saw the dam’s expensive decoration.

They eventually found the missing bag, which the beavers hadn’t completely looted

“The casino people were elated” to get the money back, even if some of it was wet, Harrell said.

Altogether, deputies found about $40,000, and they expect to find the rest in a safety deposit box at a bank in Mississippi, authorities said.