UPDATE: December 27, 2013: Although they usually say that no good deed goes unpunished, for once, some one whom did the proper thing has really gotten rewarded for it: cab driver Gerardo Gamboa had a little merrier xmas after receiving a $10,000 reward through the mystery poker player to whom the $300,000 in cash belonged, as well as another $1,000 from his company Yellow Star cab and a $250 dining certificate.

Evidently like ransom cash the bucks, still bundled in those $5,000 wads, was fallen off at undisclosed location by Mystery Poker Person for Gamboa’s good deed.

When you’re a vegas cab driver, you won’t ever know who or what will end up in your taxi on any provided day. So driver that is veteran Gamboa was unfazed each time a Bellagio resort doorman, opening the cab’s rear door to assist a new customer in, noticed a brown paper bag left regarding the chair by the cab’s previous occupant, evidently. He didn’t even bother to look inside whenever doorman use it his passenger seat until he got to a light and interest got the best of him. Guessing that chocolates lay in delay, a peek was taken by him inside, with illicit thoughts in mind should his conjecture be correct.

‘What form of chocolates are they?’ Gamboa pondered. ‘Are they good ones that I really could buy some for my wife as a present?’

Sweet, Not Candy

But there were no chocolates inside when Gamboa exposed that little bag that is brown instead, there had been cash. And by cash, we mean…cash. To be exact: $300,000 worth in $100 bills, all well bundled. Which probably weighs a bit more than chocolates, Mr. Gamboa; and perhaps after 13 years in city, a brown paper case should set some alarms off, but hey, maybe that’s just us.

After notifying his dispatcher of the cache, Gamboa took it to his employer’s Yellow Checker Star Transportation head office but not before he dropped off his present passenger, who we assume was unaware associated with the celebrity package riding shotgun in the passenger seat up front.

Now once more, call us cynical, but we might have assumed this kind of large amount of cash in an innocuous brown paper bag was destined for payoff of some dubious merchandise. But Mr. Gamboa is evidently more trusting than we are, and after turning the bucks up to Yellow Checker celebrity, cops were called in and somehow, the owner was discovered, via some good ol’ fashioned gumshoe techniques.

Retracking His Route

This indicates Gamboa recalled dropping off a passenger he had acquired at Cosmopolitan, utilizing the destination that is final a Palms Place tower; he additionally remembered that this passenger had left him a $5 tip for the ride. Soon after, he headed to your Bellagio cab line, in which the resort’s doorman had noticed the backseat cash stash case just a few mins before noon.

Adding drama towards the situation, some body mysteriously turned up at the Yellow Star offices to claim the bag, but had no ID, nor was he the person to who Cosmopolitan had apparently tracked a payment that is outgoing of precise $300,000. Naturally, this is when Metro had been called in to assist and sort it all out.

In the end, it had been determined that what could have appeared as if drug money was actually the house of a famous poker player whom Metro refused to publicly identify. Yes, we are dying of curiosity too.

‘ This is the amount that is largest we have discovered in my own 32 years in this business,’ said Yellow Checker Star chief running officer Bill Shranko. ‘Recently, we found $9,000, but that is no longer a big deal.’

Although Gamboa had apparently considered scuba diving into some chocolate, he says he never considered stealing some of the cash that is bagged.

‘Even I don’t need money that doesn’t belong to me,’ said Gamboa, who’s been a Sin City resident for 27 years though I am a poor guy. ‘Tomorrow, I go back working.’

We hope the poker that is unnamed will release a little bankroll and show some appreciation to one of Las Vegas’ truthful citizens.

A driver for another cab company also returned $222,000 that was left in his cab by a passenger although this find was the largest, last year.