Benny is bold and brazen, that is well established.

He also is creative and crafty, constantly coming up with new ways to spread his generosity.

The latest modus operandi for delivering his trademark $100 bills is a coin purse.

Several coin purses, all made of canvas with colorful floral prints and metal clasps, have been found to contain one of his signed $100 bills.

Six neighbors in a one-block stretch of a northeast Salem street in the Grant neighborhood were recently blessed by Benny.

If you’re new in town or been living off the grid the past four years, Benny is our mysterious and mythical philanthropist who circulates $100 bills throughout the community. My records show the total has reached nearly $75,000, and that’s only what has been reported to me.

Most of the bills early on were discovered inside the packaging of items on store shelves in the Salem-Keizer area. Benny branched out by tucking them through cracked windows of vehicles in parking lots, first at stores and then at events.

He also has been known to carouse fairs and festivals, slipping $100 bills inside tip jars and pieces of pottery.

Salem Art Fair & Festival has been a favorite haunt, with 23 finds reported to event director Stephanie Patterson during the three-day event this past July.

When she heard Benny bills were surfacing, she sent an explanatory email to participating artists because many came from out of town and didn’t know the Benny story.

“A lot of artists said they were going to pay it forward,” Patterson said. “It transpires goodwill. It’s pretty awesome.”

More:The history of mystery $100 bills found around Salem

The coolest thing about the Benny phenomenon is that his generosity has inspired others to commit random acts of kindness.

Word of his altruism spread nationally last summer and was featured in a video by Humankind, an online platform that is part of the USA Today Network. That video, which has been viewed more than 1 million times on Facebook, came on the heels of me reporting that Benny’s benevolence had surpassed the $50,000 mark.

Soon after, Inside Edition did a piece on him, sending a freelance crew to town to interview some of the folks who have been blessed by Benny. The crew spent time at another one of his favorite haunts, Salem Saturday Market.

Benny also has been a regular at the Oregon State Fair, although I'm told he didn't attend this year, which means there may be a copycat.

I've received reports of at least four $100 bills surfacing at the state fair. One was pinned to a quilt entered in the competition, one was dropped inside a dollhouse on display, and two were slipped through the cracked window of a parked car.

The two in the car did not have signatures, but I'm not sure about the other two.

If Benny would have gone to the fair, he could have seen Reagan Lowry’s Lego creation in the Crafts & Hobbies Department. The West Salem 14-year-old created a scene from the Saturday Market inspired by his story, and it won a first-place ribbon in the teen division of the building blocks competition.

If you look closely, there are three teeny, tiny $100 bills hidden in the market scene, one in a basket, another at the feet of a person playing guitar, and another inside a stroller. Benny has left real bills at the real market in similar locations.

Lowry said if she finds one of his $100 bills she will probably donate it to a school, hurricane relief, or a homeless shelter.

More:Six things to know about mystery $100 bills appearing in Salem

Many finders pay it forward, passing their newfound fortune on to their favorite cause, charity or nonprofit organization.

Hundreds of people have been given that opportunity because Benny has been at this for more than four years. While most of the beneficiaries are in the Salem area, he manages to get around.

I just received a report from a Portland-area mom who said her 16-year-old daughter found one of his signed $100 bills in the three-ring binder she purchased at Office Depot in Tigard.

The coin purses are an adorable new twist to his generosity.

I’ve learned of two other instances outside the Grant neighborhood where people found them. One was found in the bed of a pickup truck parked at a South Salem restaurant. Another was found along the divider in a parking lot at a South Salem store.

James Mogle gave us a heads-up about the coin purses in the Grant neighborhood. He noticed what he thought was a candy wrapper near his bottom front step, but it turned out to be one of the coin purses.

He has a locked gate, so Benny had to have tossed it into his yard.

Across the street, at a six-unit apartment complex, three other coin purses were left balanced atop the doorknobs. Rosario Castro, 7, noticed them first and shared the good news with Xitlaly Pacheco, 10, who lives next door and also found one.

Maria Gaytan, Xitlaly’s mom, said the first thing her daughter mentioned was that they could send some of the money to her little brother in Honduras. Their family “adopted” a boy, who is now 3, and donate monthly for his care.

Marcela Miles, who lives next door to Mogle, found her coin purse on the welcome mat at the front door. She figured one of the little girls in the neighborhood had been playing on the porch and mistakenly left it there.

And then she opened it and found a Benny bill inside.

“It makes my day,” she said. “I feel like one of the lucky ones. I hope God blesses him, too.”

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Mogle feels the same.

“I have never had any luck in my life or won anything,” he said. “But boy, I’m telling you, I know what people feel like who have won the lottery. I’m still on Cloud 9.”

“Forward This” appears Wednesdays and Sundays and highlights the people,places, and organizations of the Mid-Willamette Valley. Contact Capi Lynn at clynn@StatesmanJournal.com or 503-399-6710, or follow her the rest of the week on Twitter @CapiLynn and Facebook @CapiLynnSJ.