Wallet containing nearly 1,000 euros left in Malaga taxi is returned to its rightful owner

A wallet with almost 1,000 euros inside has made its way back into the hands of its owner after it was left behind by a customer in a taxi in Malaga.

Driver Rafael Calderón found the wallet last Wednesday 13 September while he was working his shift and discovered 900 euros inside, as well as several credit cards. It never crossed Calderón's mind to steal it, and so he set off in an attempt to return it to its owner. "I don't want what is not mine, I prefer to sleep peacefully at night," he said.

Calderón sought the help of Paco Martín and his company, Recoverit, and the wallet was returned to its rightful owner in under 24 hours. "I sent them a WhatsApp the day before, but they didn't answer me," said Paco Martín, a Local Police officer and founder of Recoverit, a company dedicated to the recovery of objects by data matching and which has been working in collaboration with Unitaxi since last January.

"Yesterday morning a man then called me, who had previously called a radio station, but the radio station, not being able to help him, referred him to me," Martín said. He was the owner of the Airbnb where the owner of the wallet was staying. As soon as Martín received the call, he got in touch with Rafael Calderón and they went together to Maqueda, where the property was rented by the owner, and returned the wallet to a relieved woman.

Martín pointed out that when a member of the public hands in a lost object, it is registered at the police station with a reference number. After 20 or 25 days the item is then transferred to a lost property department. The problem is that until it reaches lost property, the item is not recorded, so the owner cannot know that his or her things have been recovered. With Recoverit, the whole process is digitised and leaves an online trail. So even if the item is not yet in the lost property department, it can be located, so the owner could recover it sooner.