Bank Accidently Gives Man $5 Million Dollars

If I told the bank one time and they said, yes it is mine. I'd do one of two things, withdraw it all and move to a country with a no extradiction law. Or I'd keep the money with the same bank and withdraw the intrest I made form it every day til the corrected the mistake. But that's spoken as someone whos been a victim of Identy Fraud when someone hacked into my paypal account and spent a little over $1,500. With easily over overdrew my account. My bank eventually (about 1 week) fixed the mistake and the bank charged me no fees or anything. But I did end up having to pay a late fee on another bill I could pay due to my bank not giving me my money quickly enough.

is this true story or what? if this one is true story then the an would be the lucky one. i bet there is someone who doesn't want to expose the identity giving his money to that man freely caused something reason. it would be so ridiculous if bank doing mistake in huge amount like that. but it ever happened in my country that someone giving wrong transfer to another person. in this case, the bank can't do anything caused its already the risk of the transferer and the receiver can have the money or sometimes, bank also giving wrong transferer but not in much or huge amount and in this case also, the receiver can have all of the money

I don't know about the criminal charges, but it is definitely a bad judgment call to start using the money. Unless I made a lucrative stock option transaction I most definitely recognize an extra $1000 into my account, not to mention an extra $5M of course. If he had put it into a conservative or money market account in the same institution, I don't even think he would get the interest - the transaction would have been reversed as of the date of the error and all interest, dividends and capital gains would have been reversed. At least the money would have still been there and easy to correct. But I would strongly suggest everyone, if it happens to you, leave it alone, no matter what the bank representative says. There are always people higher up looking at the quality of work of their employees, and even more departments verifying the transactions - and of course the real owner of the $5M - you don't think he won't notice something amiss? Now if it is still there after a few months, maybe then you can pretend you won the lottery. But I would hire a lawyer first. Then if it's really mine, a financial consultant.

In my opinion, both the bank and the man are at fault.. Firstly, the bank should have verify that the man is not the account holder with the same name...but they didn't...And they assume that he is.. Secondly, the man when told he has 5 million dollars did not report the error...Because he was dishonest about it, that's why he's charged for grand larceny... Well, its human nature....If you are in his shoes, would you not have withdrawn the money? I would probably withdraw as well...just to make sure its a few million :D

Well this falls back on honesty. He knew he did not have the money, he should not have touched it, and yes the bank is also at fault for thier lack of security of funds into an account that apparently was not monitored during the transition, how can you mix up such a large amount of money? Both are to fault.

i have read this story a couple of minutes ago and i think they are both in error. the man should have insisted that the money is not his and he should have think before he withdrawn the money, on the other hand, the bank is more liable with the mistake because the bank should have checked with their records to make sure that they are dealing with the right customer most especially if they are dealing with a big amount of money..

In my opinion, the bank is responsible and Benjamin Lovell has done nothing wrong. In the uk we are regularly told that it is not possible for A.T.Ms TO BE WRONG, so i guess if the banking system can not make mistakes then he has nothing to worry about. If I had been charged, I would have being fighting this most vigorously blessed be

Geez, he did nothing wrong! The bank was at fault. Make that bank pay back!!

I work at a bank, but that is not influencing my answer. Basically, the rule is that you cannot profit from someone elses mistake. So in this case, the man was wrong for spending the money because it was not his. He will be responsible for repaying it. I've seen this happen before, but on a much smaller scale. An account number misread on the check sorting equipment and the number it read as happened to be a valid account number. The person went to the ATM and saw they had lots of money in their account and went out and bought a car. Banks have all kinds of checks and balances and the error was discovered the very next day. The rightful owner of the money was immediately credited and the person who bought the car ended up in trouble with the law, in addition to having to pay all of it back, including overdraft fees that incurred when taking the money out of her account caused it to go in the negative.

Wow..I wish im the sister of that man.. so he can give me some of that millions..whoa.. thats fantastic.

both the bank and the man are in error but the bulk of the blame is on the man banks are no charity organisations there is no free accidental money anywhere,the should have insisted that the bank get to bottom of the matter without touching the money

I think that since he knew that he definitely did not have that money in his account, he should have never taken it out! I know I wouldn't have!