The Utah Mystery Tipper Is Not Who You Think

A mystery man who left three tips totaling $7,000 in Utah is not billionaire Sir Richard Branson (as news outlets have speculated),  Jared Allen, the owner of Alleged, a bar in Ogden Utah, where one of the gratuities was left, tells Yahoo! Shine.

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The young man, who Allen says prefers to remain anonymous, left his first extremely generous tip on Saturday, Aug. 17th. According to ABC News, a man left a $5,000 tip on a $214.75 bar tab at Brewskis in Ogden, Utah (receipt, left). Later that night, a second tip for $1,000 was left on a $49 tab at Alleged. And finally, that same weekend (it's unclear which day) a $1,000 tip was given to a girl who works at Wolf Creek Utah Golf Course in Eden.

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Rumors have been circulating that the tipper might be Branson since he had been in town that week. However, Allen, tells Yahoo! Shine, “Richard Branson was in town that week, but he’s not the guy who left the tips. It’s a young guy, an old classmate of our liquor rep for the bar. He wants to remain anonymous.” Allen declined to provide Yahoo! Shine with more details, and although he didn't specify the amounts of the other reported tips, he did confirm that the man had left all three.

Mike Allen, Jared's brother and a bartender at Alleged, tells Yahoo! Shine: “The guy had hired a limo to drive him around all day. He and five of his friends had sat at a table and opened a tab on this guy’s black American Express card. At the end of the evening, we brought over an iPad for him to sign the $49 bill, and he informed me that he wanted to leave $1,000 as a tip.” Mike was stunned and asked several times if the man was sure about his decision. “He looked surprised that I would even question it; however, he appreciated the fact that I double-checked,” he says. “We split the tip between three bartenders and a waitress so we each took home $250.”

A representative from Wolf Creek Utah Golf Course confirmed that a large tip was left at the golf course for a woman driving a concession cart but he refused to comment on the exact amount or day or provide any other details. A rep for Brewskis did not respond to phone calls.

There’s been a slew of anonymous kind acts reported lately. In July, a man in his mid-to-late twenties walked into a Tim Hortons coffee shop in downtown Edmonton, Canada and purchased large cups of coffee for the next 500 customers for $900 (plus a Boston Cream doughnut for himself), before slipping away without revealing his identity. The kind gesture triggered five copycat acts—in Ottawa, a city bus supervisor bought 500 coffees at his local Tim Hortons and another Samaritan purchased 500 more in the Calgary shop. Here's to more goodwill!

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