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Honest cabby turns in backpack stuffed with $187,000 in cash to police, who reunite it with owner

That's a lot of cash

Boston Police report that when a man who got into a cab at Mass. Ave. and Tremont Street Friday afternoon left his backpack behind, the driver opened it up to see if there was any ID inside.

There was $187,000 in cash in it.

Police say the driver drove down to BPD headquarters and handed in the backpack. And not long after, police say, a man called in to report his backpack and money missing.

When the owner of the property arrived, he provided proof of ownership and, thanks to the upstanding, honest hackney driver, was reunited with his backpack and money.

Police did not say why the man was walking around with $187,000 in cash or whether they made any suggestions on how to apply for a checking account.

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Comments

Now welcome to the wonderful world of being surveilled. I'm sure law enforcement and various regulatory agencies are very curious as to where that money came from :-)

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from a business? Investment firm or other financial institution. Car dealership that sold a few Porsches?

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How often do you have to walk around with nearly $200k in cash in a backpack to accidentally leave it in a cab?

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I was briefly a messenger for a jewelry store. Most of the time I didn't really see what I had. It was in envelopes usually. Often, the best and safest way to carry some valuable stuff is to be really mundane and clueless about it. The store was mostly concerned about whether I could be bonded.

But that is a lot of scratch. The fact that he provided proof of ownership probably also provided a rationale for why he was carrying it around in the first place. All's well that ends well.

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We have an offsite at my work that charges cash and uses a simple cashbox. At the end of the shift, whoever's in charge that day has to run a locking cash bag back to the main site and put the cash bag in the safe. Usually, the cash is transported by some 20-something college kid who stuffs it in his or her backpack before leaving.

Thankfully, it's never more than a few hundred dollars. But traveling from the offsite office to the parking lot involves walking through a local park known for shady goings-ons, and I could absolutely see someone getting mugged and people saying, "But why was a 20 year old carrying $700 in cash in her backpack? She must have been up to no good."

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... when you'll be walking around the Back Bay and feel like going halfsies on a parking space.

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That's my question too. I wanna know why in the world you would walk around with that much cash in your bag.

There's more to this than meets the eye. You don't walk around with that much cash on you..

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Tangent, but: I always marvel at some of the prose on Wikipedia articles. "On December 5, 2004, Brandi Bragg, 17, was found dead on the property of a male friend after being reported missing on December 9". Wait, what?

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That is one transaction where cash means cash. Or could.

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According to a Boston.com article, the guy had inherited the money from a trust and showed the police a receipt to prove the money was his. The kicker for me was that he only gave a $100 reward to the cab driver. I'd have been a bit more generous under the circumstances.

http://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2016/07/05/boston-taxi-driver-find...

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The Boston Globe has yet more details, some of which conflict with Boston.com. The Globe is saying the man was homeless, left the bag in the cab while he ran an errand, then forgot to come back. In the Globe, the police tracked the guy down to a hotel.

If the man was indeed homeless, a $100 reward is more understandable.

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Let's say that's the truth. If I inherit $200K and ask for it in $20 bills, it would be a first. I would be headed to deposit it somewhere. It would be all I could think about to the point that I might even leave my phone or wallet somewhere because my focus was entirely on that bag of money on my back.

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If you're homeless, you may have a hard time opening a bank account.

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Still doesn't answer how you could be so distracted leaving a cab as to forget you had the solution to all your problems (or the cause of many more) on your back.

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in golden dollars and swim in it like Scrooge McDuck!

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That was my thought, too. $100 on $187,000? That's a meal at a moderately nice restaurant in exchange for a life changing amount of money. I'd have given him $1000, anyway.

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Let's say the guy had a 200k painting he just bought at an auction and he left it in the back of a cab. Does the cabbie deserve a thousand bucks then as well, or is it only when there's a literal pile of cash that the metaphorical fingers start to get sticky?

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The $100 is even less when you consider the fares the cab driver lost while he was running the money over to the police, answering questions, etc. They guy didn't even pay his own fare, at least initially. The cab driver could conceivably have a net loss when all was said and done.

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That's not at all easy, even if it's your money. I worked as a head teller at various branches of a well known bank downtown and the Back Bay. The ONLY people who liked large amounts of cash were certain foreigners, some Asians in particular. I had a regular elderly women who appeared homeless who had almost 1 million $ in a savings account. Most people who withdraw large amounts get a cashier or certified check. The whole thing raises red flags.

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The police, whose lives revolve around red flags, didn't seem concerned.

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Maybe they only "seem" unconcerned.

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Otherwise, Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. $187,000 would already be on the books.

Asset seizure law is crazy. If there's no claim against the money as being suspected in a crime, there must be some extenuating circumstance. My guess is in the title.

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According to the Globe, the money was a recent inheritance from the man's parents. The heir is a homeless, recently-recovered addict. He tried cashing it at a bank, but has no ID and shitty credit. Thus, his only option was to go to a check cashing store, and take cash.

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ring,ring,ring,ring:hello who's this,oh hi i am looking for a taxi cab driver who drive to me somewhere,oh sorry his wife is looking for him to,passenger oh noooooo,anyway i can't reach him,well nooooo.sounds like Ricki Martin LIVING LA VIDA LOCA.

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Bucholz pitching....

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Why the sudden suspicion over this incident ? This isn't the first time a fortune was forgotten in a taxi and then recovered. The last time I can recall offhand was the Korean businessman who left behind a heap of cash in Dorchester a few years ago and was not suspected of any wrongdoing.

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for getting a bank account and getting the money safely into it.

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