Imagine waking up one day to find an extra $120,000 in your bank account. You did not make $120,000 or win $120,000, but there it is, $120,000, just sitting there. Cool!
What would you do with all that cash? Pay off the mountain of student loans you’d otherwise be stuck with till you die? Buy a house? Buy a car?
Maybe you should call the bank and find out what’s going on?
Yeah. Yeah, you definitely should call the bank.
Robert and Tiffany Williams of Montoursville, Pennsylvania, did not call the bank, police say.
When a non-hypothetical $120,000 intended for a business was accidentally transferred into their BB&T bank account because of a teller error, the couple splurged on a camper, a Chevy, and a racecar, state trooper Aaron Brown told the Williamsport Sun-Gazette. Authorities say they also distributed $15,000 to friends who needed the money.
All told, they spent $100,000 in about 2 1/2 weeks, WNEP reported.
Eventually, though, the bank contacted them on or around June 20 after sending the money to the correct account. The bank notified Tiffany Williams, 35, that they were responsible for returning all the funds, Brown told the Sun-Gazette. He added that the withdrawal resulted in a $107,416 overdraft because the couple’s bank account had only $1,121 in it before the accidental windfall.
BB&T Bank did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Tiffany first assured the bank she would work out a repayment plan with her husband, but she eventually ceased communications, WNEP reported.
“That is kind of shocking, with all the procedures the banks have set up, checking and double-checking and triple-checking, there’s no way anybody gets away with that stuff,” Nate Weaver, a neighbor of the Williamses, told WNEP.
The Sun-Gazette reported that the couple, in separate interrogations, told police that they “admitted to knowing the mislaid money did not belong to them, but they spent it anyway.”
The Williamses could not be reached immediately, and it was unclear whether they had retained legal counsel.
The couple now face three felony charges of theft and receiving stolen property, court records show. They appeared in court last week and posted bail of $25,000 each. The Pennsylvania State Police could not immediately comment on the case to The Washington Post.
EpsilonSigma on September 9th, 2019 at 02:30 UTC »
When I was in university, every student had an account at the library that they could load with money and use to pay for printing at $0.10 a page. Some time during my first semester at school, I went to put $5.00 down so that I could print an assignment. I paid the librarian, and went over to the computer to print my document, and when you go to actually print something it will tell you how much you have left on your account. Funnily, mine said $500.00. Obviously I looked at this and thought "Oh, the lady must have messed up the decimal. I'll go back and let her know."
I did this, and the lady chuckled and said "Oh, whoops. I'll change that back right away." Went and printed my pages, still said $500 but I figured "Eh, she'll get to it. As long as I don't spend more than $5.00 on printing I'll be fine." Printed my assignment, went on my way.
Cut to the next year of school. Over that summed, my school actually started integrating a new student ID system where everyone's student ID was actually an RFID card that was tied to their student account that they could indeed load up with as much cash as they wanted and use it to purchase things at the book store, merch store, multiple cafeterias or what have you. And wouldn't you know it, they took the balance of every student's library account and transferred it to their new student ID account. At this point I figured "Hey, I did my part. I went back and told the lady, and she didn't do it. I'm off the hook." And that was how I got an entire semester's worth of lunch and coffee on the school's dime. 5 years later, fully graduated, never heard a peep.
wickedgoogely on September 9th, 2019 at 01:07 UTC »
This happened to my dad in the 80s for a little over $10k. He went in and told them it wasn’t his. They insisted it was. He went to the main city branch and told the regional manager it wasn’t his and they basically said “we don’t make mistakes”. Dad said put that in writing. He did. Then dad closed his account and got a certified check. Three months later they called for the money. “Clerical error” dad said “here’s a copy of my letter. You can work through my attorney.” He never heard back.
banditta82 on September 8th, 2019 at 22:26 UTC »
If I got a random $120k deposit into my bank account I would worried that I was being used to launder drug money or something.