iPod Taken Un-Fare-ly

Penniless passenger pays cabbie with MP3 player

A weepy tourist was forced to surrender her iPod to pay her cab fare after her credit card was declined. But don't think for a moment that the cabbie is satisfied.

"What am I going to do with the iPod? There's no ear phones!" Mohammed Islam, a three-year veteran of the hack biz, told the New York Post.

When Natalie Lenhart, of Sacramento, Calif., arrived at JFK Airport on Dec. 8, the meter read $49 or so. After repeatedly swiping her card to no avail, Islam summoned a Port Authority cop who said Lenhart "had to give the driver some compensation."

In the absence of anything else of value, Lenhart handed over her $149 iPod Nano.

"I looked like a criminal," she said. "Every time people asked me if I was OK, I just started crying more. My dignity was gone."

But there may yet be a happy ending, because Islam just wants his money.

"I want to give it back," Islam said. "And I would like my fare."

Lenhart blames the whole mess on the slow processing time for a last  minute bank transfer, claiming that she used the card to pay for food later the same day.

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