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

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

Whenever you’re a nevada cab driver, you won’t ever know who or what will end up in your taxi on any offered day. So driver that is veteran Gamboa was unfazed whenever a Bellagio resort doorman, opening the cab’s rear door to help a new customer in, noticed a brown paper bag left on the chair by the cab’s previous occupant, evidently. He didn’t also bother to check inside when the doorman use it his passenger chair until he got to a curiosity and light got the best of him. Guessing that chocolates lay in wait, a peek was taken by him in, with illicit ideas in mind should his conjecture be correct.

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

Sweet, But Not Candy

But there have been no chocolates inside when Gamboa exposed that small brown bag; instead, there ended up being cash. And by cash, we mean…cash. To be exact: $300,000 worth in $100 bills, all nicely bundled. Which probably weighs a bit more than chocolates, Mr. Gamboa; and perhaps after 13 years in town, a brown paper case should set off some alarms, 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 headquarters but not before he dropped off their current passenger, who we assume was unaware of the celebrity package riding shotgun in the passenger seat at the start.

Now once again, call us cynical, but we might have assumed such a large amount of cash in an innocuous brown paper bag had been destined for payoff of some dubious merchandise. But Mr. Gamboa is apparently more trusting than we are, and after turning the cash up to Yellow Checker Star, cops had been called in and somehow, the dog owner had been discovered, via some good ol’ fashioned gumshoe techniques.

Retracking His Route

It seems Gamboa recalled dropping off a passenger he had found at Cosmopolitan, aided by the final location being a Palms Place tower; he additionally remembered that this passenger had left him a $5 tip for the ride. Just after, he headed towards the Bellagio cab line, where in actuality the resort’s doorman had noticed the cash that is backseat case merely a few moments before noon.

Adding drama to the situation, some body mysteriously showed up at the Yellow Star offices to claim the bag, but had no ID, nor was he the person to whom Cosmopolitan had apparently tracked a outbound repayment for the precise $300,000. Naturally, this was when Metro ended up being called in to assist and sort it all out.

In the end, it absolutely was determined that what could have appeared to be drug money was actually the home of a famous poker player who Metro refused to publicly identify. Yes, we are dying of curiosity too.

‘ This is the largest amount we are finding within my 32 years in ecommerce,’ said Yellow Checker Star chief running officer Bill Shranko. ‘Recently, we found $9,000, but that’s no longer a big deal.’

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

‘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 to the office.’

Develop the poker that is unnamed will forget about only a little bankroll and show some appreciation to at least one of vegas’ honest 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.