Similar story. Back in the early 1970s, I worked with a black guy. Well edducated accountant. So we were assigned to the late lunch and ate together every day. One day he said we needed to stop at the bank for a minute. It never works that way with banks. So in we went and the snooty person at the "line" asked what our business was. He said he needed to speak with the manager. No one gets to speak to the king or president and Jerry was black. Lucky if he'd get to see the janitor. So after putting us off for a while, we did get a snooty jerk. He asked us what our problem was. Keep in mind we were both well dressed as in suits and ties. He politely said the bank made a mistake and he wanted to clear it up. We were told the
bank didn't make mistakes (by an underling idiot). So after being put off for an unreasonable period we gave up and left.

His point of view, and mine, was to just let the bank find it. After a few years he transferred it to a savings account. Maybe 30 years later I saw him again. I asked him about the deposit and he said it was in a savings account, collecting interest. OK.

Banks make mistakes and are stupid.

quote:

Originally posted by Phantom229:
Would that fall under “Ill gotten gains”? There is no way she gets to keep that money.

Oh it’s definitely not legal or moral to keep the money(except in Monopoly). I’ve litigated the issue in Florida and the law is very clear here, and I suspect elsewhere. It’s usually an unjust enrichment theory or based on the UCC, but either way it’s not yours to keep.

I had a guy who worked for me have $25K show up in his account in error. His girlfriend withdrew the money and spent it. The expected shit storm ensued and he had to sell his house to cover it. There were also some legal ramifications as well. He couldn’t open another account with any other bank and had to cash his paycheck from our petty cash.

Maybe 25 or 30 years ago, I took some checks from my wife's clients to the bank and deposited them in her business account.

Next month I reconciled her statement and the account was $450.00 short, the exact amount of one of the checks. The bank was less than cooperative when I tried to get them to find the missing funds.

I did a little digging (don't ask), went in to the branch, barged into the manager's office, told her the account number where the missing money had been mis-directed by the bank and that she needed to retrieve it and move it into my wife's account within 24 hours, and I handed her an invoice for three hours of my time at $75.00 / hour to do the research that her office had refused to do, to find out where they had put the money.

Next day the missing money was restored to my wife's account and my invoice was paid within a week.

If you owe the bank 100k and can’t pay it, it’s your problem. If you owe the bank a billion and can’t pay it it’s the banks problem. I’d like to see how this plays out specifically if she transfers it out of the bank and especially offshore.

I'm guessing it's a programming error, kind of a 'twos complement' thing gone bad when she overdrew and went negative. Going to be some re-education somewhere in the software group when they run this to ground.

RE: "Money for nothing." Just like those bad scammers' 'cashiers checks' getting uncredited from accounts when it turns out to have been a fraud, the banks can correct mistakes like this. Nobody's getting three commas out of a bank goof.

The lady may be getting her '15 minutes of fame' from this, though, and if she cashes in somehow, at least she'll have some tangible benefit to keep.

ElToro may be on to something.

It's not enough to just w/d a massive amount of cash (banks have daily cash withdraw limits anyway) and put it in a safe deposit box. You'll be in seriously bad trouble if you don't cooperate when they want that back.

A wire transfer to a numbered account in a non-extradition country, on the other hand... as long as you were willing to live the rest of your life there (in luxury) and could get out of the country before someone put the pieces together...

I hear it's nice in the Maldives this time of year.

-Rob

This is NOT real!

quote:

Julia Yonkowski

Link

$1 billion on Largo woman’s bank statement was actually a negative billion dollar balance, Chase says

LARGO, Fla. (WFLA) — A Largo woman who was shocked when nearly a billion dollars showed up on her bank statement on Saturday never actually had that amount in her account, according to her bank.

“I know most people would’ve thought they won the lottery, but I was horrified because it wasn’t my money,” Julia Yonkowski said.

It turns out, though, that she was never actually a multi-millionaire at all.

8 On Your Side spoke with a Chase Bank representative on Tuesday morning. The representative said it wasn’t a positive balance, but a negative balance of nearly a billion dollars that was listed.

She explained it’s a fraud prevention method used to freeze an account, which is why Yonkowski couldn’t withdraw any money.

Yonkowski’s late husband was a joint owner of the bank account, and it was flagged when she attempted to use it. Chase Bank said people are required to turn in proper documentation in a situation like this to avoid a freeze on a joint bank account.

Yonkowski said she hopes her story can be used as an educational lesson.


Got to say the Chase reps story sounds like BS, considering the odd number that was there, and Chase would simply have to toggle a digital switch to freee an account, not put in a negative $999,985,855.94 dollars.

If that's a real copy of the statement....

I cannot credit Chase's "explanation" as anything other than a blatant lie to avoid having to admit having made a mistake. They expect someone to believe that crap?!?!?! C'mon man!

Well considering she tried to pull out 20 dollars and was denied their explanation makes as much sense as anything.

Am I the only one who is amazed someone goes to the ATM for 20 bucks and doesn’t know she can’t cover it?

I'm amazed that someone would use an ATM to withdraw only $20. I never withdraw less than $100 at a time. For smaller amounts I just get cash-back at a convenience store.

flashguy

But if you make a deposit into your account, and the bank screws up and puts it into the wrong account, you get the “there’s nothing we can do” line.

But if they screw up and put their money in your account, all of a sudden it’s your problem to fix.

Insane.

Should have bought a billion worth of Bitcoin for fun, then given the cryptocrap back to the back when they asked for it so the bank could have fun trying to get their billion back out of the crypto account..

I had a bank change account numbering system and issue free new checks.

They issued me new checks with another companies numbers on it.

I drew out $8000 from his account before I did my books at the end of the month and noticed a problem. They blamed me, that didn't fly then they blamed who knows but I had to return the money.

My bank account was compromised on line and the bank gave it a negative 88,888.xx to stop any withdrawals. I had a mild heart attack in the morning when I saw it. They explained that is was over the overdraft protection amount and everything was frozen.

I had to manually approve any transaction for about a month for anything that hit the old account numbers they issued new numbers that day but some transaction were under the old numbers not yet processes.

quote:

Originally posted by flashguy:
I'm amazed that someone would use an ATM to withdraw only $20. I never withdraw less than $100 at a time. For smaller amounts I just get cash-back at a convenience store.

flashguy

Well, sometimes you just need $20.