\nBy Richard N. Velotta (contact)
\n\tTuesday, Dec. 24, 2013 | 12:44 p.m.<\/p>\n
\tTalk about a Christmas miracle.<\/p>\n
\n\tA Las Vegas cab driver who found $300,000 \u2014 $100 bills in six $50,000 bundles \u2014 in a brown paper bag in the back seat of his taxi returned the money to the owner, a gambler who had won big at the Cosmopolitan.<\/p>\n
\tYellow Checker Star named cabbie Gerardo Gamboa its Driver of the Year, rewarding him with $1,000 and a dinner for two at an exclusive restaurant. Gamboa may still get a reward from the unidentified gambler.<\/p>\n
\tGamboa picked up the player Monday morning at the Cosmopolitan and took him to Palms Place, where the passenger gave him a $5 tip.<\/p>\n
\tGamboa\u2019s next stop was the Bellagio, where a doorman removed the bag from the back seat of the car and put it on the front passenger seat, surmising it was chocolate left behind by a previous rider.<\/p>\n
\tWhen Gamboa stopped at a traffic light after picking up his next passenger, he peeked inside the bag and discovered the money.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cI told my passenger, \u2018You are my witness on this,\u2019 and then I immediately called my dispatcher,\u201d Gamboa said.<\/p>\n
\tOnce the cash was secured at the taxi company office, it was tracked to the owner through Cosmopolitan records. The man arrived at the office in sweats and a T-shirt to reclaim his money, but he didn\u2019t have any identification.<\/p>\n
\tYCS officials took another few hours conferring with the Cosmopolitan and Metro Police to make sure they were handing the money over to the right person.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cHe was really polite about it and waited patiently,\u201d said Bill Shranko, a YCS manager. \u201cHe said he\u2019d do whatever was necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tOnce his identity was verified, YCS turned the cash over to the player, who asked to see Gamboa to shake his hand. He told Gamboa he planned to reward him and got his contact information.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cIf he doesn\u2019t give me anything, that\u2019s OK,\u201d Gamboa said. \u201cI\u2019m not waiting for any kind of return. I just wanted to do the right thing, and I appreciate what the company did for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tGamboa, a humble and religious man who has worked for YCS for 13 years, has now become a media star, fielding interview requests from Los Angeles, Chicago and New York about the unusual find.<\/p>\n
No replies were posted for this topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Richard N. Velotta (contact) Tuesday, Dec. 24, 2013 | 12:44 p.m. Talk about a Christmas miracle. A Las Vegas cab driver who found $300,000 \u2014 $100 bills in six $50,000 bundles \u2014 in a brown paper bag in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-casino-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6743\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}