Cabbie Returns $187K, Gets Meager Reward

Fare left inheritance in Boston taxi
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Jul 6, 2016 2:12 AM CDT
Updated Jul 6, 2016 5:03 AM CDT
Cabbie Returns $187K, Gets $100 Reward
Police in Boston released this photo of the stacks of cash.   (Boston Police Department)

A man who left about $187,000 cash in a Boston taxi has been reunited with his money thanks to an honest cabbie, police say. Raymond "Buzzy" MacCausland, a driver for the Independent Taxi Operators Association, picked up a fare with a cast on one leg on Saturday. "He told me he was homeless and had been living in a shelter for six months," MacCausland tells the AP. At one point, the man got out of the cab to meet a friend, intending to return and leaving a bag behind, MacCausland says. The 72-year-old driver waited about 30 minutes, but the man didn't return, so he drove to the man's hotel to look for him.

Unable to find the man, even with the help of the hotel staff, MacCausland looked in the bag for identification. There he found three bundles of $50 and $100 dollar bills. He immediately drove to police headquarters to turn in the cash. Police found paperwork indicating that the money was part of an inheritance. "To me that was a relief," MacCausland says. "Because I know if it wasn't they'd come looking for me." The cabbie tells the New York Daily News that he's "never been a crook" and he would never have kept the money, though he wasn't thrilled that its owner gave him a reward of just $100. He says that around 30 years ago, a fare he drove to the airport left a briefcase containing $10,000 behind and gave him no reward at all after getting the money back. (More taxi driver stories.)

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