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This banker is in the top 1 percent — of jerks.

A mild-mannered, hardworking New York City cabby lamented to The Post yesterday that he was insulted, demeaned and threatened by a boozy bigwig who refused to pay him, screaming: “Go back to your own country...I’m going to kill you.”

Mohamed Ammar said investment banker W. Bryan Jennings — a $2-million-a-year fat cat for Morgan Stanley — went from being a sweet gentleman he picked up in Midtown to a surly, knife-wielding “drunk” who stiffed him on the $204 fare when they got to Jennings’ Darien, Conn., home.

“I said,‘You have to pay me. It’s the law,’” Ammar recalled at his Queens home yesterday, where he lives with his wife and three children. “He says, ‘What law? You should go back to your own f--king country.’

“I say, This is my f--king country, excuse my language. I’m an American citizen!’” said the driver, who is originally from Egypt.

“That’s when he pulled out the penknife...He leaned forward and yelled, ‘I’m gonna kill you, motherf--ker!” Ammar said.

“I saw his hand balled up into a fist and I thought he was going to punch me,” the cabby said.

“I put my hand out to protect, and that is when I saw the penknife. He went for my neck first but ended up slashing my hand many times as I was fighting him off...My hand was bleeding pretty bad” as Jennings fled on foot, Ammar said.

“He was drunk and out of control, and he could have killed me. That was one of the scariest moments of my life.”

Ammar needed six stitches to close his wounds.

Jennings was charged Wednesday with assault, larceny and committing a hate crime for the Dec. 22 attack. He was released on bail.

Ammar’s frightening account came as Morgan Stanley placed Jennings on indefinite leave from a managing-director job that paid an estimated $2 million last year. Jennings is co-head of North American fixed-income capital markets at the New York investment bank.

“This is just terrible. This makes Morgan Stanley look bad,” a top executive said.

Jennings admitted to cops he knocked back “two or three Coors Lights” at a Morgan Stanley charity auction he ran on the afternoon of Dec. 21, and later drank “several more beers” at the bank’s holiday party at the hotel. But he claimed he wasn’t “highly intoxicated,” court records state.

When a limo failed to come, he hailed Ammar’s cab.

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ORIGINAL: fucktoyprincess
This sounds to me like an argument that got out of hand, and if I had to guess, both parties are at fault for allowing the situation to escalate. As a New Yorker, I can tell you that a certain percentage (not very high, but a certain percentage) of cab drivers here are rude and obnoxious themselves. I've certainly gotten into arguments with some of them over fares, routes, etc. So you have, possibly, a drunk passenger, maybe a slightly obnoxious cab driver, and suddenly things get out of control.

With that said, the cabbie is always due their legally entitled fare - provided they followed the route you asked for and otherwise abided by the laws that govern them. They are not allowed to ignore a route request and they are also not allowed to just charge whatever they want for a fare. That is against the law. With that said, physically attacking a cab driver isn't allowed either unless you are defending yourself.

I find it hard to believe that a wealthy banker was refusing to pay the cabbie his legally entitled fare unless something else had happened (were they disputing a pre-negotiated fare, was he refusing to pay because something else happened?). Drunk people get into cabs all the time in the city. They still pay their fares. Something tells me there is more to this story that what we are reading. And, if not, well obviously the banker is completely in the wrong, and in a way, that's that.

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Ammar says the incident started out innocently. He picked Jennings up outside of the Ink 48 hotel at West 48th Street and 10th Avenue.

They exchanged pleasantries. “When he got into the cab, I took out the book that shows fares for out-of-state trips,” he said, explaining that a fare of $204 is suggested.

“I showed this to him and I said, ‘Before we leave, we have to agree on the price of the trip.’ He says, ‘Oh, I’ve got plenty of cash. I’ll pay you a lot.’

“He says this while waving around some bills. He was waving around a lot of money. I tell him I don’t need a lot of money, just the fare and that would be fine.

“I tell him that I should collect the money before we go on our way. But he says, ‘Don’t worry about it. You will get plenty of money’ ” after the men agreed to a $204 flat fare, Ammar said. “I went along with this because $204 really is a lot of money to me.”

Ammar said Jennings slept during the 43-mile trip to Darien, where they arrived after midnight.

When Ammar woke Jennings, “He was groggy and angry and he was talking very loudly,” the cabby said.

“We drove up his driveway...He slides open the door and asks, ‘How much do I owe you?’ I tell him $204. He starts yelling at me.”

“Are you crazy?” Jennings screamed, recalled the driver. “That’s too much. I’M ALREADY HOME. I DON’T FEEL LIKE PAYING!”

Jennings then said, “I’ll give you $50,” Ammar recalled.

“I tell him, ‘Sir, we are going to drive back into town so we can find the closest police station . . . Would you close the door?’ He refused. He sat in the seat as I drove with the door open.” Then the alleged attack took place.

Jennings allegedly told Ammar “the cops wouldn’t do anything to him because he pays $10,000 in taxes,” court records state.

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Sadly, the wealthy often have a sense of "privilege".

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ORIGINAL: Owner59

This guy was drunk.....

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ORIGINAL: fucktoyprincess
At the end of the day the dispute in question here is only about money. Has it occurred to anyone that the cabbie knows the guy is rich and tried to ensure he would be in a position to sue the banker for physical assault (a civil suit that has nothing to do with whether the police charge this guy with a crime)?

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ORIGINAL: kalikshama

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ORIGINAL: Fightdirecto

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ORIGINAL: fucktoyprincess
At the end of the day the dispute in question here is only about money. Has it occurred to anyone that the cabbie knows the guy is rich and tried to ensure he would be in a position to sue the banker for physical assault (a civil suit that has nothing to do with whether the police charge this guy with a crime)?

So the cabbie magically and mystically knew that the banker was carrying a knife and the cabbie knowingly and willingly forced the banker to attack him with that knife just so he could sue him later for physical assault?



You're right about one thing: the dispute in question here is about money - the banker has a lot of it and didn't feel he should give any of it to anyone who performs a service for him. The banker and the cabbie agreed on a fare of $204.00, when they got there the banker tried to stiff him on the agreed fare and offered only $50.00 (possibly because, since he only makes 2 million dollars a year, the banker couldn't afford to pay the other $174.00 he had previously agreed to pay).



I had an interesting talk with the contractor who recently remodeled the kitchen at my house. He told me that he never takes a job for a really wealthy client - because the only clients who have ever tried to not pay him after the work was completed have been millionaire clients.

It almost makes you miss the good-old-days of New York City when all five cab companies in town were owned by one of the Five Mafia/Cosa Nostra Families (the company I drove a cab for was owned by the Bonnano Family). Nobody robbd a cab driver - and nobody stiffed you on a fare. If anyone did either of those things, their bodies would be hauled out of the East River a few days later.

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This guy was drunk.....

What excuse does half of the GOP have?

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ORIGINAL: fucktoyprincess
Here is the thing. A civil suit of physical assault only requires the banker to have tried to harm him in some way physically - it doesn't require a knife. So the cabbie doesn't have to think the guy has a weapon to end up with an altercation with him that then turns physical. I said physical assault - not assault with a weapon.

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The very fact that the banker has so much money is exactly what makes this story very odd. People I know who have money think nothing of going to clubs downtown and dropping thousands of dollars on bottle service, etc. In other words, people who have money usually have no trouble spending it. That is what is odd here.

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I'm not saying the cabbie is not telling the truth. I'm just saying we've only heard his version of the story. There is always another side. I'm not sure why you think this particular cabbie is absolutely telling the truth.

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Again, this banker is going to get sued by this cabbie. And the cabbie is going to walk away with much more than $204. The cabbie, whether he is lying or telling the truth, is going to win this one. The very fact that the banker was drunk is going to discredit his testimony about what happened (whether he tells the truth or not). And the cabbie's claim about the racial epithets will make any jury sympathetic. The cabbie will get a pretty penny out of this.

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ORIGINAL: fucktoyprincess

FR

This sounds to me like an argument that got out of hand, and if I had to guess, both parties are at fault for allowing the situation to escalate. As a New Yorker, I can tell you that a certain percentage (not very high, but a certain percentage) of cab drivers here are rude and obnoxious themselves. I've certainly gotten into arguments with some of them over fares, routes, etc. So you have, possibly, a drunk passenger, maybe a slightly obnoxious cab driver, and suddenly things get out of control.

With that said, the cabbie is always due their legally entitled fare - provided they followed the route you asked for and otherwise abided by the laws that govern them. They are not allowed to ignore a route request and they are also not allowed to just charge whatever they want for a fare. That is against the law. With that said, physically attacking a cab driver isn't allowed either unless you are defending yourself.

I find it hard to believe that a wealthy banker was refusing to pay the cabbie his legally entitled fare unless something else had happened (were they disputing a pre-negotiated fare, was he refusing to pay because something else happened?). Drunk people get into cabs all the time in the city. They still pay their fares. Something tells me there is more to this story that what we are reading. And, if not, well obviously the banker is completely in the wrong, and in a way, that's that.

As for the racist comments by the banker - those sorts of comments are made more than one would expect. Sadly, the banker is just another American racist. And guess what - that's not just 1% of the American population.