LAS VEGAS (AP) — A World Series of Poker player says he hit an "emotional jackpot" thanks to an Uber driver who returned his $7,000 ante. 
 
 Jacob Brundage, of Lakeland, Florida, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal (http://bit.ly/1RZJRBK) that he lost a tote filled with cash and playing chips June 1. 
 
 The 39-year-old says he realized the bag was in an Uber car that he rode from The Venetian to the Rio. 
 
 Brundage failed to reach the driver through the app and enlisted a group of waiting Uber drivers to help. 
 
 The driver, who wants to remain anonymous, called Brundage and returned the bag. 
 
 Brundage gave him $200 as a reward. 
 
 Uber spokeswoman Maui Cheska Orozo says this is likely the most expensive item ever left in an Uber car in Las Vegas. 
 
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 Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal, http://www.lvrj.com ||||| A trip to the casino cage started in a panic for Jacob Brundage. 
 
 The professional poker player’s black tote, filled with $7,000 in cash and playing chips, was missing. 
 
 “I started freaking out, shouting ‘no way, no way,’” recalled the 39-year-old Lakeland, Florida, man in town for the World Series of Poker. 
 
 That’s when Brundage realized the money-filled bag was left in the back seat of a minivan he requested through Uber around 9 p.m. June 1, when he caught a ride from The Venetian to the Rio. 
 
 Brundage frantically grabbed his smartphone and used an in-app option that allows riders to directly call their drivers through a masked number. 
 
 The driver, who declined an interview, picked up the phone but couldn’t hear Brundage. He hung up. Brundage tried again and again, with no success. 
 
 Frustrated, Brundage said he stepped outside the casino to get some air when he came across a group of Uber employees who were promoting the service at the Rio. Brundage explained his dilemma, and the Uber team immediately started tracking down the driver and the lost bag. 
 
 More than an hour passed before Brundage’s phone finally rang. On the other end, the driver explained that his cellphone battery died. 
 
 “I told him that I would give him $200 if he came back with my bag,” Brundage said. 
 
 The driver agreed to circle back to the Rio within 20 minutes. 
 
 During the wait, Brundage said he listened to Christian music on his phone and retraced the night’s events, starting when he cashed out at The Venetian. Uncharacteristically, he forgot to put the cash-filled tote into a larger backpack to ensure it wouldn’t be forgotten. 
 
 When he got into the backseat of the minivan, Brundage set the money bag to his left. Rather than engaging the driver with small talk, Brundage said he spent most of the ride on the phone with a friend he met at a Las Vegas church. 
 
 “Honestly, I was distracted,” Brundage said. 
 
 Brundage isn’t alone. Uber had 168 reported incidents of keys, wallets and bags that were left behind in vehicles across Las Vegas since September, said Uber spokeswoman Maui Cheska Orozco. 
 
 “People lose things in their Uber all the time,” Cheska Orozco said. “But this has to be the most valuable thing that someone lost in one of our cars in Las Vegas.” 
 
 The driver finally pulled up to the front of the Rio and opened the minivan’s doors. The bag was exactly where Brundage left it. 
 
 When he recovered the cash, Brundage said he felt like he won an emotional jackpot. As promised, he handed $200 to the driver and kicked in another $100 to the Uber team members for helping out. 
 
 “It felt like a miracle, and I was very relieved,” Brundage said. “This man’s honesty and integrity made me feel very blessed.” 
 
 Contact Art Marroquin at amarroquin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0336. Find @AMarroquin_LV on Twitter. ||||| (Getty) 
 
 Update below 
 
 A frequent user of the ride-share service Uber is swearing off the company after she says her driver accused her of vomiting in his car to stick her with a $200 cleaning fee, and backed it up with faked photos of the alleged barf. 
 
 Meredith Mandel, who works as an art director in Manhattan, says she left a late dinner at the restaurant Roman's in Fort Greene early on the morning of February 21st, accompanied by her boyfriend and a friend, and caught an Uber back to their respective apartments in Williamsburg. She said that the trip ended shortly before 1:30 a.m., no muss, no fuss, but that she awoke in the morning to see a $200 cleaning charge tacked onto her $19 fare in her Paypal account, without any explanation. 
 
 
 
 Gross, but is it real? (Meredith Mandel) 
 
 Upon receiving those, Mandel went into detective mode. 
 
 "I was infuriated, because I realized that it actually is a scam," she said. "At first I was trying to actually give them the benefit of a doubt, but I realized [it] because all of the money goes to the drivers." 
 
 She determined a few things of note. One: at least one of the three photos appear to show portions of the car in the front seat. She says that she and her fellow passengers were confined to the back. Two: all of the purported puke seems to be confined to easily washed plastic surfaces, mainly floor mats and the plastic of the dashboard and a driver's-side door. Three: there have been other reported instances of alleged Uber vomit scams, including two incidents in Tampa, Florida that got a driver fired, and another in Los Angeles. Four: when she uploaded the photos to a metadata scraping website, no time or date was attached to the photos (we repeated this process with files she provided and got the same results). And of course, she says neither she nor her companions were drunk. 
 
 "Dinner literally lasted two and a half hours, and me and one other girl in the car had two really small glasses of wine," she said. "My boyfriend had two beers. This is over two and a half hours, so we were basically sober by the end." 
 
 Oh, and that yellowish goop from the photos? Mandel said the glove doesn't fit on that one either. 
 
 "The vomit is super yellow, and we ate really dark food, like meat," she said. "It just doesn't line up." 
 
 Mandel and her female friend had the pork ragu, while her boyfriend had the pork milanese with dark root vegetables, she said. 
 
 
 
 What in the... (Meredith Mandel) 
 
 After a few more frustrating days, she laid off Uber customer service and filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. She checked back in with Uber yesterday and in the evening, before Gothamist reached out to Uber, a customer service guy named Jose wrote to say, "I'm sorry to hear about you were charged more than you expected for this trip." He said she would be refunded her $200 within 1-3 days. Jose also pledged to follow up with the driver and "make sure to take appropriate actions." 
 
 Mandel said she used Uber "all the time," but has sworn off it since the incident, "which is super unfortunate, but it's because I just don't feel comfortable anymore." She said she has downloaded the NYC Taxi app and Lyft to fill the void. The second $200 charge didn't go through and has since disappeared, she said. 
 
 We reached out to Uber's corporate office to see what those "appropriate actions" might be, how widespread the problem is, and how the company's protocol for proving cleanings works. Spokesman Matt Wing sent this statement: 
 
 "We want riders and driver to treat each other with consideration and respect which is why riders who create a serious mess in a driver's personal car can be charged a cleaning fee. If a rider is wrongly charged a cleaning fee, we investigate the circumstances and then provide a refund, which is what happened in this case." 
 
 Uber's website says that the cleaning fee does indeed go to the driver, and says that the fees are "always" accompanied by an "an updated receipt with an explanation," which Mandel says she didn't receive. A customer service rep named Patrick told her Uber "does not have to warn passengers about a cleaning charge." 
 
 Repeated fare cuts dating back to 2014 have prompted some New York Uber drivers to stage strikes, work slowdowns, and protests in recent months. 
 
 An Uber driver we spoke to, who asked to remain anonymous, said that passengers ralphing is a real problem, especially early in the morning, and that he tries to steer clear of fares who he finds falling over as they sit on the curb. 
 
 "When I see somebody too drunk, I ask them, 'Are you sure you're okay to ride? You're not going to vomit in the car?'" he explained. "Ten, fifteen minutes later, they puke all over the car." 
 
 Such an event can take a driver out of commission for hours as he or she searches for a 24-hour car wash and tries to shampoo out the nastiness, costing lost revenue on top of the cleaning bill. It is theoretically possible to collect money for phantom throw-up, though. The driver explained that Uber first asks for photos and bills the customer an amount its bean-counters deem appropriate. A receipt for the cleaning is only required if a driver asks to be reimbursed in addition to the initial amount. Uber does not reimburse for lost time, he said. 
 
 The driver said he hadn't heard of any puke-faking Uber grifters, and that it seems like a lot of trouble to go to. 
 
 "I don’t see why somebody would go out of their way just too get a hundred, a hundred fifty dollars, when you could make that in two or three hours of working," he said. 
 
 Still, he said, it's possible. 
 
 "I wouldn’t be surprised if some Uber drivers used that as a scam," he said. "We’re human beings, and unfortunately, human beings are capable of anything. But all that to collect a hundred, two hundred dollar cleaning fee? That's a new low." 
 
 Update 5:40 p.m.: 
 
 Taxi and Limousine Commission Deputy Commissioner Allan Fromberg reached out with these words of wisdom:
– A World Series of Poker player says he hit an "emotional jackpot" thanks to an Uber driver who returned his $7,000 ante. Jacob Brundage, of Lakeland, Fla., told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that he lost a tote filled with cash and playing chips June 1. The 39-year-old says he realized the bag was in an Uber car that he rode from the Venetian to the Rio, reports the AP. "People lose things in their Uber all the time," says an Uber rep. "But this has to be the most valuable thing that someone lost in one of our cars in Las Vegas.” Brundage failed to reach the driver through the app and enlisted a group of waiting Uber drivers to help. The driver, who wants to remain anonymous, called Brundage and returned the bag. Brundage gave him $200 as a reward. "It felt like a miracle, and I was very relieved,” Brundage said. “This man’s honesty and integrity made me feel very blessed."