The company that issued the check, Association of Certified Liquidators, said no one had ever before tried to cash a promotional check.
"We're going to have to check into this," said the association's president, Mitch Klass.
It all began in May, Mr. Combs said, when he decided on a whim to see if a bank would accept the "nonnegotiable" check. On May 22 the bank credited his account $95,093.35.
Mr. Combs said he waited three weeks, but the bank did not mention the error.
"I was having fun with it," he said. "I would call my bank for my bank account balance and hear it jingle, 'over $100,000.' "
So he withdrew the money and put it in a cashier's check, which he then stored in the bank's safe deposit box.
First Interstate has said it noticed the error on June 5, but Mr. Combs said he was not notified until June 22. In the meantime, the bank froze his account and the teller machine kept his bank card.
A_Sinclaire on April 13rd, 2020 at 07:34 UTC »
There was a case in Germany rather recently. A guy bought 508 still active sim cards from the time when flatrates were not yet a thing. The cards all had a very certain contract from back then which gave you 2 Cents back for every call you received. As taking a call cost 9 Cents a minute it was a profitable promotion for the company.
But they never stopped that promotion and now with flatrates he could basically auto dial those numbers and receive 2 Cents each time he picked up call. This way he collected 210,000 Euros on those cards. There also were over 14k Euros of recharging balance on the cards. The company noticed it and canceled all his cards.
Technically the contract said there is no pay out. But he sued and said that he could not use the accumulated balance because the company canceled the contracts.
A court agreed with him and the company had to pay out 225k € to him
There's still active sims with this contract as the company probably just ignores them now instead of canceling them. On ebay they go for around 1k € or more per sim.
Defavlt on April 13rd, 2020 at 06:37 UTC »
Reminds me of the time I received (what I thought was) spam offering me a weekend trip to Danzig Gdansk (Poland), if I just signed up to try some mosquito repellent.
They didn't ask for any credit card details, or payment of any kind, so I figured, what the hell, let's try. Lo' and behold, I got like 10 packages of mosquito repellent, and tickets for the boat ride and accommodation.
A few months later they sent a card, as well as a short survey on the effectiveness of the repellent.
Edit: A name
blondepharmd on April 13rd, 2020 at 03:52 UTC »
Patrick Combs (the guy who cashed the check) then turned the whole story into a stage comedy show and has toured in Europe and the United States.