This is the stuff my fantasies are made of. Who hasn’t had the fantasy of checking his bank account and finding an extra US$31,000 in it? Well this teen had this fantasy become a reality, and he certainly didn’t waste any time with it either. Within a few days he managed to withdraw $20,000 and charge $5,000 on his ATM card.
This error happened on March 7th, 2014, when a man walked into a Citizens Bank on U.S. Highway 29 – presumably the only bank that still uses a pencil and a ledger to deposit money into their customer accounts – and deposited $31,000. Since there were a few people with his name, the teller did the only logical thing, pick any ol’ name and deposit the money into that account. Because asking for his account number would’ve meant a whole lot of extra work or something (who knows?).
Obviously by the time March 17th rolled around, the victim (whom we shall call ‘Incredibly trusting man’ or ITM) realized the money wasn’t in his account, called the bank and was all like, “Yo what’s up? Where’s my dough?” (because I believe he might be someone who uses words like ‘dough’). After scrolling through their ledgers and consulting their vaults tellers finally realized their mistake. But by this time the 18-year-old teenager had already had a field day spending about $25,000 of the money.
Being a teenager, when he was finally told about the mistake on March 18 and then asked to return the money, the teen insisted the money was from an inheritance. You gotta admire his willingness to play this through.
Of course now, the bank that wants the money back has hopefully decided to fire the damn teller who made this mistake and upgraded to computers.
On a more serious note though, the bank hasn’t prosecuted but said it will if the teen doesn’t return the money. While on one hand, the kid should’ve known it wasn’t his money and notified the bank, on the other hand, he’s a teenager. He must’ve just thought all his dreams had come true. I feel the bank should be the responsible ones. I mean who the hell just deposits money into an account based on a name alone? I think the victim should sue the damn bank!
So what do you think? Should the bank charge the kid or should they take responsibility?
The kid who took the money out of his account is definitely not the one at fault here, I would say it’s the bank’s responsibility to pay the man who deposited the money the amount they misplaced, it’s their fault this happened at all, why blame the kid?
The bank to prosecute the kid for their own mistake? lol