It's all fun and games until the cops show up

I was driving to my softball game, half listening to the radio, when the traffic lady caught my attention. I call it the tivo effect. Because I've become accustomed to being able rewind tv and go back for things that seem interesting, I only pay partial attention. It's a nasty habit that has really screwed up my radio listening skills.
What I heard her say was, "blah blah blah... and we aren't sure if they are drug dealers or bank robbers, but they are throwing money out the car windows. Of course you're going to want to pull over if you're near this high speed chase." I wished I had actually listened to the beginning of the story to hear where to go to collect the free money, and thought it sounded pretty funny.
It got less funny about 10 minutes later when freeway traffic came to a halt and I saw a guy walking on the side of the road looking through the bushes for money. Then came two more people with cash in their hands, these two wearing black vests with POLICE on the back. In the course of about 20 minutes of crawling down the freeway at 2 mph, I nearly drove over a $20 bill and saw another fly by. Yes... it did cross my mind to pick it up, but only to help with the cleanup. But I'm such a wuss about getting in trouble with the law, that I just left it there for fear someone would jail me for tampering with evidence, or disrupting traffic, were I to open my car door and get out. So I hung out the window to take some pics, then went on my way after they finally opened the road ahead.
Another radio report came in describing how, at the time the money was flying about in clouds, people were stopping their cars on the freeway to run around and catch the money, even jumping over the center divide to get money on the other side. Yikes. I must have seen 15 police cars on my slow trip toward softball. It ended with the suspects caught further down the freeway, and me just barely arriving for my game on time.
For a more official report on the incident go HERE , to the local paper's website. At the time of posting, the cops had collected over $17,000 but there's no further info on what kind of bad guys had done this. They're guilty of littering, certainly, but I'm curious what else they were up to.
Video added - thanks to a reader who saw this on the BBC.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7955984.stm