Such property believed to be abandoned, lost or stolen or otherwise illegally possessed, as is covered by this chapter, must be retained in custody by the chief of police or the principal official of the law enforcement agency, who shall make reasonable inquiry and efforts to identify and notify the owner or other person entitled to possession of the property and shall return the property after such person provides reasonable and satisfactory proof of that person’s ownership or right to possession and reimburses the agency and others authorized to incur expenses by the agency for all reasonable expenses of such custody. If the owner of such property or any other person entitled to possession of the property has not been identified after at least 30 days from the initial date of custody of such property by a law enforcement agency, the principal official of such agency shall cause to be published, at least once in a newspaper of general circulation in the county in which such official has authority or in a newspaper of general circulation in the county in which the property was taken into custody in the case of a state law enforcement agency, a notice of the law enforcement agency’s possession of such property and its inability to ascertain the owner of the property. Such notice must also contain a brief description of the property and a statement to the effect that, if the owner of such property or any other person entitled to possession of the property has not claimed such property within 5 months of the date of such published notice, such property will be surrendered to the person who found it, if any, sold to the highest bidder at public auction, donated to a nonprofit organization or charity or disposed of as waste. [PL 2011, c. 267, §1 (AMD).]