Austrian bus driver finds, returns bag with $510K

An Austrian bus driver returns a half-million dollars. (Lee Jae-won/Reuters file)
An Austrian bus driver returns a half-million dollars. (Lee Jae-won/Reuters file)

An Austrian bus driver made an unexpected discovery in the back of his bus: a bag containing 390,000 euros (nearly $510,000).

Did he take the money and head for the border? Nope. Proving himself a very good guy (and likely earning some good karma in the process), the driver, identified only as Wolfgang P., resisted temptation and turned in the huge payday to the local police. It turns out the bag of cash belonged to an elderly woman who had recently withdrawn her life savings.

"At first I thought it was somebody's shopping or medication," Wolfgang said. The woman has yet to reach out about a reward.

One would think a person carrying that amount of cash might spring for a cab, not that these sorts of things don't happen in taxis, too. There are numerous stories of bus or taxi drivers proving themselves honest in the extreme. Earlier this year, Las Vegas cabbie Adam Woldemarim found a laptop case stuffed with $221,510. Woldemarim turned in the epic find to his company's security office. The owner returned to the cab office and rewarded Woldemarim with a $2,000 tip.

And last month in Singapore, a cab driver found a bag with over $900,000. The cab driver, interviewed by a newspaper, said he never considered keeping the cash. "The money is unimportant to me. It doesn't belong to me, so how can I use it?" he asked. He did get an "undisclosed cash reward" from the grateful owners.