A cleaner at Channel 9’s Melbourne studios has been rewarded for his honesty after finding $100,000 of dirty money in a toilet.

Police will allow Chamindu Amarsinghe to keep $81,597 of the money he found at the Docklands studios, with the remainder to go to the state.

Mr Amarsinghe, who is now studying IT in New Zealand and is working in fast food, said he was “speechless” when he heard he would get to keep the cash.

“I’m really, really lucky. I’m not going to waste it,” he told News Corp.

He plans to donate some of the money to helping disabled people and to a Buddhist temple in Berwick.

The cleaner was tidying the ground floor toilets at the studios in August 2011, when he found a sanitary bin full with $50 and $100 notes.

“There was too much to count – I thought someone was playing a prank on me,” he said.

“But when I touched the notes – all yellow and green – I realised it was real money.”

Mr Amarasinghe called his supervisor and then police before the $100,000 was removed from the bathroom.

However, police were not able to establish the origin of the cash and no one came forward to claim it, though a Sydney man was charged with dealing with the proceeds of crime over the cash.

Magistrate Michael Smith said “there’s not reason why such honesty should go unrewarded”, when handing down his judgement that the cash should go to the student.

Mr Amarsinghe has this week been granted permanent residency in Australia.

‘“I just want to spend my life in a normal way, find a job in IT and carry out that dream,” he said.