Too much to give back willingly. Too little to emigrate. Bugger.

Poor people have a tendency to give back money that they find.

I wish this would happen to me! All I've had is someone taking my money out of my account without my knowledge.

Regard it as your bonus. Bankers have given them out for less.

Thank God for hyperlinks- we wouldn't have known that you had published a novel without them and this crazy mishap otherwise!

I would have donated it to a small charity-close my bank account-change my name-move home-then write to the bank incognito asking for another £250.000 to be paid into a Swiss account or you will tell The Sun how they had to reimburse one of their customers !

Rich people get stuff for free, like in Mark Twain's "The Million Pound Bank Note", you should've tried to blag as much as possible on the strength of a bank statement.

I know exactly how you feel man... my wife once picked up £45 worth of internet-ordered bedding from John Lewis At Home on Purley Way, Croydon, then got an email saying the order was uncollected and she'd be refunded if she didn't collect within a week. Then they didn't actually refund the £45.

Well, there was a case here in Australia where someone ended up with 10 million dollars that wasn't theirs due to a bank error (the bank meant to lend them $100,000 not ten million. They took as much of it as they good and hotfooted it to China which I believe didn't have a formal extradition treaty.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/on-the-trail-of-the-10-million-dollar-runaways-1693387.html

He did get caught in the end though.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/runaway-millionaire-leo-gao-hui-to-be-extradited-report/story-e6frg6so-1226209547894

In my personal case, I did once end up with about $3000 that wasn't mine and put into my account by the bank by mistake but I immediately reported the error. I think my parents, whose money that they'd asked the bank to deposit into their own account wouldn't have been too happy with me otherwise.

Why did your bank not contact you about the sudden and unusual deposit of a large sum of money! Recently I legitimately deposited a similar sum (from the sale of a house left to me in a will) and after a grilling by the teller as I paid the cheque in I was subsequently harassed by the bank manger who took it upon themselves to phone me and ask why and what I was going to do with it.

Their why was sort of understandable; they didn't want to be prosecuted as accomplices to money laundering or drug trafficking. Even though I had already explained the origin to the teller. Having explained again that this was an estate disbursement (so they weren't going to jail and could therefore still collect £2million bonus) they became very and highly intrusive with questions about what I intended to do with my money. "F off it's my money I'll do what I like with it, thank you very much."

So why weren't your bank harassing you too? Or maybe your bank is the one to use for laundering and other high value nefarious activities.

How is 250k not enough to emigrate with?!

Next time, ask a lawyer to explain the law on estoppel.

@shan164 - as they say over here, someones always trying to steal your stuff, like that Australian story you mention that actually happened in NZ :-)

Best I ever had as was GBP3000 by mistake, but my wife was once one of those people who mistyped a 6 for an 8 and sent GBP100,000 winging off to the wrong account...

The bank were very nice about it and got the money back easily enough, but the "oh no" second when she realised she'd done it was a lifetime long for a student!

"here in Australia" ?

Jesus! thieving bloody Aussies will even steal a story about theft ! This happened in Rotarua, New Zealand. His partner in crime was a Kiwi!

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10776848

Tell you what - you can have Gao and Huring if you promise to keep Russel Crowe.

Oh sorry about that, I *thought* it was New Zealand initially and then I went and looked it up to check and somehow got completely confused when I saw the bank was Westpac, also not registering all the mentions of New Zealand in the process. Guilty of low expectations of my bank and home country as well as being a bit tired and distracted I guess.

I hereby apologise and emphasise that all credit for this thievery should go to New Zealand.

By the way, I believe Russell has bought several properties here, so we've got him for the long haul.

I'm sorry about that. I *thought* it was New Zealand but then I thought I'd better look it up before writing that. They weren't kidding when they said google was making people stupid. Somehow, every single reference to New Zealand totally failed to register in my brain. I imagine when I saw the word Westpac, the low expectations I already had of my bank unconsciously took over.

Possession is nine tenths of the law. I would have thought that since you had taken no part in acquiring the money then the least you could have asked for is a fee from your bank for the service of allowing the transfer of the money back out of your account, the experience did after all use up quite a deal of your time(which to most people is very precious).

I would have put it in an overnight REPO account. You could have made a small profit.

OMG, what a teaser that woman is! :-)
I would have been worried that someone might want to use my account to wash money or something... I think I would have called the bank right away.

Anyhow, I wonder what would have happened if no one ever had come for the money? What if nobody contacts the bank for quite a while? Would the money become yours after a certain amount of time, say, a year or two?

"Hello ? I've lost my ATM card. Unfortunately it was in the wallet that also has a note of my PIN number".

where does estoppel come in to play? There's been no reliance on a promise just a mistake on the behalf of the transferor. It would be dishonest to keep the money - you know if doesn't belong to you.

Why did you not just contact the bank directly, rather than the UK payments council? (Perhaps the UKPC were the right people to call, but I don't understand why).

I would have done so with just a tinge of regret, but at least it makes you look better than if you keep looking at your bank balance, but never contact anybody about it.

Rather than sit and wait to see what happened and whether you might profit from it, why didn't you just ring up your bank and tell them about the mistake straightaway, Leo?

Or at the Guardian is it only bankers who are dishonest, and everyone else just sees what they can get away with.

... the least you could have asked for is a fee from your bank for the service of allowing the transfer of the money back out of your account, the experience did after all use up quite a deal of your time(which to most people is very precious).

Less, presumably, the fee Mr Benedictus received for writing this piece PLUS the free gift of the plot for his next novel: the fate of someone who finds a quarter of million in his bank account and leaves the country with it.

Was this woman so rich it took a week for the bank to assess the wrong number on such a massive sum? If so, a small 'thankyou' I'm sure wouldn't have gone amiss given how your honesty meant the full balance was immediately recoverable.

I'm a bit taken aback at the total lack of concern or interest for the woman who paid out £250,000 (maybe for a house? a business?) and then saw it disappear into the ether when she mistyped a number.

How sad that you weren't able to keep her money.

I know exactly how you feel man... my wife once picked up £45 worth of internet-ordered bedding from John Lewis At Home on Purley Way, Croydon, then got an email saying the order was uncollected and she'd be refunded if she didn't collect within a week. Then they didn't actually refund the £45.

Comedy platinum.
I just spat half a macchiato across the kitchen table reading that.

I thank-you kindly for sharing, memoid.
Tremendous stuff.

I thought that there was a test case some years ago in the UK, where someone successfully claimed that they were entitled to the interest accrued when a huge sum was erroneously transferred to their account by the bank, although they had to give the principal sum back. However, with the laughable amount of interest paid on current accounts in the UK, even on £250k the amount of interest on a couple weeks would be quite modest....about £10 maybe?

it seems absurd that they'd consider it stealing if someone or a bank makes an error and gives you money. But then name a law that isn't designed to help ensure the rich stay rich.

I could have emigrated with 250k, would have mulled it over for about 15 seconds.

A little over a week... How efficient...

When someone cleaned out my account over a weekend it took my bank over 3 months to pay me back... It would have taken longer if I hadn't have memorised the internal Fraud phone number on a bank Clerks PC screen and then started ringing them myself every day..

The only way I could live was to take out an overdraft with them and then I had to separately claim back the fees for having such a large overdraft..

... However, when I went £15 over my limit last year....... Blah blah blah, oh, you get the idea...

With regard to the error-making women, while her money appeared instantly in the writer's account and disappeared from her own account (if she immediately checked), the intended recipient would not have known he/she hadn't received it for a while and wouldn't have informed the woman until they were aware - that could take a few days. Even if they checked with their own bank, they could well have been given the "this can take a number of days"/"it's the holiday time so everything is a bit slower".

Secondly, and I'm not sure if you'll believe this (I'll check for support for this when I have time as I read this recently elsewhere), but since her transfer was electronic she may have no legal right to retrieve her money. Note that the writer was asked to agree to the re-transfer but he didn't ask what would happen if he said no. The woman has no legal right to know the name or details of the recipient and the bank can only ask the writer to return the money - there is no law that says he must and the bank cannot even be forced to ask him. This would be particularly difficult if the writer banked (as is eminently possible) with another bank and that bank cannot or will not apply subtle pressure - his own bank may be able to threaten to close his account but, of course, what happens if he rather than the woman is a 'bigger' client?

Tony Blair would have lost it in his maze of companies.

I'm a bit taken aback at the total lack of concern or interest for the woman who paid out £250,000 (maybe for a house? a business?) and then saw it disappear into the ether when she mistyped a number. How sad that you weren't able to keep her money

That's a fair point right there obelia.
I confess I merely assumed that this lady simply has such vast funds that a mere quarter-mil wouldn't be missed.
"£250K? Pah! A gratuity for the cloakroom girl"
A fool and their money are soon parted and all that...

Which is wrong.
As you are right.

In the past I would have contacted the bank straight away and had the money returned to the woman and wouldn't dream of touching it as it wasn't mine. However... under this thieving government, that supports the rich at the expense of the poor, and due to the huge bonuses paid to bankers, my attitude towards wealthy people has hardened. And, far from the writer's idea of £250000 being a measly amount that wouldn't fund emigration or much else, for most people IT WOULD. Anyone who wrongly deposits £250000 without being ultra careful during the transaction is unconcerned about their money. I can't afford to buy my own home, but £250000 would buy a nice, modest home!!! I would have contacted the bank right away and given them until the end of the day to remove the money from my account, then if it was still there the next day I would move it to a different account and buy a house with it. Then offer to pay it back at a tenner per week and let the bank sort out the mess with the other customer. Call it wealth redistribution...

Surely regardless of the zeros in a bank account, one wakes up rich every morning simply by having a wife and children.

Surely regardless of the zeros in a bank account, one wakes up rich every morning simply by having a wife and children.

I like your style sjcstarmer.
Richer than Croesus if you're that way blessed. Sage words.

I am utterly 'banco' in all respects.
Yet, despite such abject poverty, I remain happy and consider myself lucky considering I have both arms and legs, all senses intact and a variety of other blessings.

I seem to recall the figure £87,000.
This was the monetary value (I believe) that the London School of Economics placed on 'having friends'.

Have a nice day everybody - be thankful for what you've got.

x

Had it been transferred into my account I would have moved quickly, so as to ensure that the door didn't hit me on the arse as rushed off to the airport..

Happened to me and to someone I know.
In my case, as a school-kid I was woken Sat. morning (no Sat banking then) by the bank saying they had made a mistake on my account and they would like to correct it, was that ok? I of course said yes, put the phone down at which point the notification came through the door and I realised I had been briefly richer by £2'000 (not bad for a school kid in the early 1970s)

Best one was an American colleague, working in France and about to move back to New Hampshire. The bank paid the salary and relocation expenses of his boss into his account. He immediately transfered it to the US, said he had bought a piece of land with it and when the bank found out, he said there were so many transfers in and out at that time that he thought it was genuinely his. In the end they agreed an interest free loan over 10years.

Bank names available providing the mods can handle it.

Mr Leo Benedictus, this song's for you brother.

(And anyone else that fancies a listen to Love's Arthur Lee smoothly rendering Curtis Mayfield's "Be Thankful For What You Got")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUmrTvHSnSw&list=FLBSiupaOpOqGfsgkD4g65fA&index=34&feature=plpp_video

We're all blessed in so many ways that it's difficult to remember half the time.
Here's to good luck. And genuine, bona fide serendipity.

The Playgroup my children went to sent some money (about £100 so much less than this) to the 'wrong' account one time; wrong being a mistyped digit. The bank could not (or would not) get it back for us and maintained that as it was not a customer of the same bank they couldn't trace it. Clearly the level of cash involved meant that Playgroup didn't take it too far, but is is still a worthwhile lesson to check where you are sending your money.

It's amazing isn't it? Joe public is expected to do the right thing, but as soon as you are a major multinational corporation, honour and integrity don't come into it.

Why? Having just spent some time trying to understand it I don't see how it applies? Maybe you could have said to ask a priest to explain the marriage vows, that would seem to be as helpful.

(Not being a member of the legal fraternity it may just be I'm being a bit thick here).

Mis-typing the account number when you are doing a transfer must be a pretty easy mistake to make. I had to transfer some money to my daughter's account a while ago - nothing like £250,000 but more than I could afford to lose - and I was very worried about making exactly that mistake. it doesn't matter how many times you check your typing it is still scary to see all of that cash whooshing out of your account. The trick is to set up the transfer details and then send them a fiver. Once they confirm that it has arrived safely you can safely click on the same details to send the rest.

I'm amazed that the banks can be so incompetent as to make all bank account numbers valid.

At least for credit cards only 10% of numbers are valid (the last digit is a check digit) so mistyping one digit always gives you an invalid number. Mistyping two digits could produce a valid (but wrong) credit card number if you're unlucky.

But then again perhaps I'm not really amazed given that there is no downside to the bank to sending the money to the wrong account (it's not their money, what do they care?)

Well I could rearrange the storyline, anyway, ... jazzactivist, Agent80, Processedpea ...

I just emigrated first, and then popped back for a weekend visit ...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/travisp/97629240/

That's ridiculous. I would have put it in a high(er) interest account and then given them everything back and invoiced them for the interest value to cover the inconvenience of having to sort it out in my own time.

Are you going to be taxed on it?

So the majority view seems to be that I should have stolen it. What crooks you all are. I did consider this, of course, but I'd have had to teach myself advanced money laundering in about 24 hours. I also, yes, felt rather guilty about this poor (or more likely rich) woman, who must have been doing her nut. A quarter of a million, I think, is about the level where even Roman Abramovich starts noticing.

As for my my fee for this article, I've decided to give it all to chari... Whoops! I've just pressed the wrong button and accidentally paid my gas bill.

PS
@sjcstarmer You're right, of course. I do wake up rich every morning. Very, very early every morning

I would swop £250,000 for a wife and kids, but £2,768 wont even get me an invite to the parents.