Thanks for all the advice guys..... I agree that the police probably don't have a 'routine' for this that will allow him to keep the gun.... I had a pretty hard time recovering my own gun, registered to me, that they took from me after a legal self defense shooting... even after the DA told them to give it back to me....
Let me make this clear... If I had good reason to believe the gun was stolen or used in a crime and dumped I would advise him to give it to the police (perhaps anonymously).....
The problem here is that he has very little reason to believe something like that.... It seems highly unlikely that a gun used in a crime would be placed into a case with 2 magazines and left under a pile of leftover tenant junk in a security apartment building...
If he found it in a river or something.... well, yeah, that might seem likely.... but I would guess that the gun was left by a tenant who didn't want it, just like all the other junk in the pile... He was employed to 'throw away' that pile of junk, and told that he could keep anything if he wanted it.... if it were something other than a gun I would question why someone would just dump something valuable like that, but there are plenty of people who just wouldn't know what to safely do with a gun or what it was worth and be unwilling to 'ask around' about it...
Given his building (inner city, mostly single middle class 20-30 year olds), the conditions, and the gun in question, my guess would be a girl whos dad/boyfriend gave her a gun when she moved into 'the big city'.... she never used it, never understood why she should have it, perhaps a little scared of it, kept it in her storage locker, went to move and just decided to dump it....
He has no desire to give the police a gun that could rightfully be kept, and I wouldn't want to advise that.... He is not into guns at all, but he's not the kind of fool to give away valuables either...
I think I will look around on his behalf and see if I can have the gun checked out without bringing it in.... keeping records of the search for the rightful owner is a great idea....
I understand that this is just net advice, but I think it was all good advice, even though some of it contradicts others take on it....
Glad I asked you guys.....
Any other ideas are welcome (some great ones here).... and if anyone could quote me statute pertaining to this that would be great....