That is, until 7 On Your Side's Nina Pineda started sleuthing.
In a dark cab at 5 a.m., on the way to the TV show set where she works as a make up artist, Annie Martin felt something by her feet.
"I thought it was a coke can," she said. "I looked down. It was a wallet."
Inside the billfold, she found hundreds of dollars.
"There was $340," she said. "That's a lot of money."
But there wasn't much else.
"No ID, no nothing," she said. "There was nothing in there. It was crazy."
The only clue we had were two receipts to the Baychester Payment Center, which brought us to the Bronx. There, we met Sonya Carballo.
She is the cashier and the manager at the check cashing and bill payment center, and she looked up the date and amount on the receipt. It was for a check cashed on November 15 at 3:39 p.m.
And, since they snap a picture and keep a record of each person who cashes a check, we had a name and a face.
"He cashes his check here every Saturday," Carballo said. "That was his whole check, his whole paycheck in that wallet."
But finding him wasn't that easy.
Sonya says she knew he lived around the corner, so she sent someone to his apartment, who knocked on his door.
His name is Gabriel Hernandez, who has worked as dishwasher in an East Village pub for the last eight years. He had taken a cab uptown after his night shift last weekend, dropping his wallet in the same cab that picked up Annie on her way downtown.
And so she put 7 On Your Side on the case.
"I knew if anyone could do it, you could do it," she said. "I'm so happy."
Not as happy as Gabriel, though, a father of two who didn't have a clue we were about to return his cash-stuffed wallet.
The hardworking dad works three jobs, and the pay was for 24 hours on the clock.
And now, that once-lost money is going to buy presents for Gabriel's two young sons.
"Gracias," a grateful Gabriel said. "Feliz Navidad."