Sen. Bob Menendez‘s (D-NJ) sister testified on Monday that storing cash in one’s home is a “Cuban thing” in an attempt to explain why federal agents found $480,000 in cash during a raid at the senator’s New Jersey home last year.

Caridad Gonzalez, 80, told a New York jury her family was forced to leave everything behind when they fled Cuba and that the only money they had was what her father hid in the false bottom of a grandfather clock.