Yup. Once the precident is set it could become that famous american stereotype come true:

"You'd like us to look for your lost husband ma'am? Please make the deposit check out to..."

"I'm afraid we had to use the helicopter to bring in catering for the searchers...that'll be an additional charge."

I know how tight money can be for a volunteer organization but as a SAR responder I'd feel bad enough about not finding anything let alone knowing that the guys widow got billed for the trouble.

Makes me wonder if maybe the effort was a bit of a SNAFU and now they're trying to cover their mistakes with cash. He's a high profile millionaire and I'd bet that there were so many chef's in the kitchen during the search that they couldn't have found his plane if it had crashed into them. I'd also bet they kept going long after they knew they should have quit because of the publicity of failing. Most searches in these parts are done in 4 hours. Gone are the days of multi-week and month long searches...the organization and management techniques are too good and the technology has improved a great deal.