Who is the mystery Big Spender who left a grand total of $7,000 in tips to three servers at Utah bars? No one is saying. He left enormous tips on relatively small tabs. This caused problems: point-of-sale systems aren’t set up to allow 1000% tips as a fraud prevention measure, and because 1000% tips are so rare that they get national news coverage.

If the tips were in cash, well, anyone can handle that. What’s kind of unusual is that the mystery benefactor added the massive tips to his tab, which he then charged to an AmEx Centurion card. Bar staff had to get creative to put the tip through, creating an imaginary $1000 item and adding it to the customer’s tab.

One of the generous tipper’s companions thanked workers at one bar for checking multiple times and ensuring that the man wasn’t intoxicated.

What could the motive be? A mysterious money laundering scheme? A lottery winner? Plain old generosity toward service workers? Maybe we’ll never know.

In other flinging-random-cash news, we do know the identity of the person who had $10,000 in small bills thrown from a helicopter solely to delight strangers. The fluttering windfall was one of the last wishes of a local man who specifically requested in his will that ten grand be tossed out of a helicopter to strangers.

The Big Tipper: $5,000, $1,000 tips left at two Ogden bars [Standard-Examiner]

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