Ataf Tatur
Ataf TaturEgged spokesman

An Egged bus driver found a wallet containing $20,000 to its owner after finding the wallet in a bag forgotten on his bus.

The driver, Ataf Tatur, has been working with Egged for forty years.

On a recent Thursday, Tatur finished his Line 18 bus route in Haifa's Neve Sha'anan neighborhood and was conducting a routine security inspection of the bus when he noticed a bag forgotten by one of the passengers.

Upon investigation, the bag was found to contain $20,000.

Tatur quickly brought the bag and its contents to the local Egged offices, and together with the branch director searched for a means of identifying the owner.

Documents in the bag helped identify the owners as a Russian-speaking couple, and driver and director asked a Russian to call the owners, who arrived within an hour to collect the bag.

The owners brought with them their identity cards and correctly identified the bag before it was shown to them.

An Egged spokesperson noted that in recent years, the number of forgotten bags containing large sums of money has risen significantly. All of the drivers who found the packages helped to find the owners, who were surprised to see their belongings returned.

"This is the accepted norm in Egged, and it is what we expect from those behind the wheel," the spokesperson said.