OF all the get-rich-quick schemes this has to be one of the most ingenious — and potentially dangerous.

Glenn Berger says he was an out-of-work thief 14 years ago when the idea struck him to start diving for golf balls at the bottom of lakes and selling them back to clubs for use on their driving ranges.

At a minimum of a $1 a ball — some are worth double that — Berger calculated he could make a pretty good living.

But more than a decade on he claims he’s now fishing out anywhere between 1.3 to 1.7 million balls a year across the golf course-rich state of Florida and has pocketed a tidy $15 million since beginning his career.

“I was partially unemployed and I was stealing golf balls out of a golf course lake where I lived and I realised that wasn’t the way to make money ... this business just blew up,” Berger says.

Of course there are risks in a profession like this. Berger has encountered tables, golf carts, lawnmowers, snakes and his most feared work hazard — alligators — over the years.

“I really don’t like to talk about alligators but they happen and you learn how to deal with them,” he says. “Scuba diving is a dangerous sport as it is. People can usually see. I can’t see. So I have fish, snakes, turtles and all those fun things running into me all the time.”

One of the most frightening experiences came in 2007 when a 2m long alligator crawled on to his back. Berger managed to escape without injury — and about 4000 golf balls.

Berger told the Tampa Bay Times he competes for business with about 100 other fulltime divers. They usually pay a fee — either five cents a ball or a flat fee — to work a particular course.

While public courses — or “ball farms” as Berger calls them — are generally the most fruitful, there are also riches to be made at some of Florida’s most elite golf resorts.

TPC Sawgrass — which is the home of the PGA Tour’s Players Championship — features a par-3 17th known as “the Island hole” which sucks down about 100,000 balls every year.

USA Today attempted to calculate how accurate Berger’s claims were and discovered it was possible to make a million dollars a year retrieving skewed shots. “The average golf course hosts about 30,000 18-hole rounds every year, and let’s make a very conservative estimate an average golfer will lose 1.5 balls to a water hazard every 18 holes,” it estimated.

“That would mean Berger would need exclusive rights once-a-year to retrieve all the golf balls from about 34 different course’s water hazards. If he does that, he’d hit his “between 1.3 and 1.7 million golf balls” figure. A bit of a stretch, but certainly doable.”