A retiree in Altoona, PA says that his bank told him he could spend the $280,276.76 that was mysteriously deposited in his account. He knew it wasn’t his, but the bank assured him that everything was in order and he was free to start spending.
From the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:
His checking account with First Commonwealth Bank showed an Oct. 23 deposit of $280,276.76. The Altoona retiree said he knew the staggering amount of money didn’t belong to him, or to his wife, Becky, so he called the bank — several times — to report the mistake, his attorney said.
Starbird’s attorney said the bank assured his client more than once that everything was in order, that the deposit was accurate, that all was OK with his account. So, Starbird and his wife began to spend their unexpected windfall, thinking that an anonymous benefactor had given them an awesome gift of free money.
Yeah, not quite. Now the bank is suing Herbert Starbird, claiming that he never contacted the bank. By the time the bank noticed the error, Mr. Starbird and his wife had spent $163,330.37. The bank recovered $102,935.48 that remained in Starbird’s checking account and took $14,010.91 from his savings account, according to the lawsuit. Starbird’s lawyer says that his client has been trying to pay the bank back, but doesn’t want to mortgage his house to do it and would like an interest free payment plan. The Tribune-Review says that the lawsuit shows Starbird has made two payments so far: $624.25, and $5,500.
Couple say they began spending after bank’s OK [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review] (Thanks, Justin!)
(Photo: This Year’s Love )
More From Consumerist
-
Whistleblower Involved In Outing Big Banks Says Keeping It Secret For 3 Years Wasn’t Easy
-
Sallie Mae Bank Can’t Write You A Check, Despite Being A Bank And All
-
Lawsuit: I Listened To Chase About My Mortgage And Ended Up With No House And A Dead Husband
-
Lawsuits Accuse Bank Of America Of Helping Developer Trick People Into Buying Worthless Land
-
Charter Admits It Shouldn’t Charge Customer Modem Fee, Keeps Charging Her Anyway
@shades_of_blue: Actually, it was pretty spot on.
Something is a fact when you have EVIDENCE to back it up, such as a legal citation. Just because you have an EXPERIENCE with something does NOT make it a fact, dear.
I worked for a call center that recorded all calls. I also worked *many* places, including my current office, which does not record calls. Not only do laws vary based on the size of the business, but on the state and country (naturally) so what applies to you does not make it universal.
Only on the internet does “It is true for me so it MUST be true for EVERYONE!” seem even close to rational argument.
Here’s what you do in this situation:
Go down to the branch, ask to withdraw the entire mystery amount in cash, then stick it in a burlap sack with a big dollar-sign on it. Then ask to see the manager (he’ll probably already be there I assume if it’s a big amount). Hand him the sack and tell him what happened. Tell him “It’s your problem now.” Also bring a friend to videotape this whole thing in case the bank decides to claim you withdrew the money and split.
If they won’t take the sack, just keep loudly asking them whose $x,xxx they accidentally put in your account. Best done while the bank is busy so your fellow bank victims can see how badly the bank keeps their books.
I like the idea of taking the cash and paying off your mortgage. Then when they want it back asking for a interest free loan.
I would have gone into the bank and asked in person with someone else videotaping the exchange after getting the go ahead on the phone.
What jury would side with the bank? And if they took the money out afterwards, you could sue them.
@rmz: Depending on your industry, and location your retention requirements by law will vary. But I suspect you knew that. If your a public company IIRC it’s 2 years for most things.
Even for personal use, if you delete an email ASAP and were involved in a legal matter where that email was requested by the court… you may be in trouble. Though they would also request it from your Email provider who likely retains a copy for at least 30 days, and that should cover your butt.
Regardless, your responsible for your own records. Keep them, and keep backups of them. That beauty of digital. You can have as many as you want.
He’s dead in the water. There have been quite a few cases of Nigerian scams where people overseas deposit money in a person’s account as a show of ‘good faith’ in furtherence of a scam. The NYT profiled one guy who owes the bank millions. This is despite the fact he called the bank to verify the funds were legitimate. It turned out months later that they were fradulant checks written on company accounts. Even though he believed the money was his and his bank told him there was no problem with the deposits at the time, he ended up owing millions.
Besides that though, you know this guy doesn’t have much of a case due to his lawyer. A lawyer who has the law on his side, argues the law. A lawyer who knows his client is going to get boned based on the law, floats the possibilty of jury nullification.
I side with the guy.
I don’t care whether or not he’s making things up – these stories are just always too similar to the story of the guy who was arrested at a BoA for cashing a bogus check he thought was fishy *AFTER* he asked them to verify the check before he cashed it.
He thought the check *MIGHT* be funny because the payment sounded like a scam, so he wanted to *VERIFY* with a *THIRD PARTY* (the bank) before he committed a crime. They verified that the check was legitimate, then told him he committed a crime *AFTER THE FACT*.
If you walked into a police station and asked them if buying some cocaine was a crime, was told “no,” then proceeded to purchase the cocaine and were summarily arrested, the charge wouldn’t stand in court – why is there a different standard for the bank?
@shades_of_blue:
There is no such law.
If you know of one, cite it. The Discovery Act has nothing to do with retention of recorded telephone calls – it would deal with turning the records over to the court in a legal proceeding, but that’s all.
@RvLeshrac:
I suppose it would be good to clarify “There is no such federal law in the United States,” since YMMV with respect to other countries, and certain states such as California have much more in-depth consumer protection laws.
What ambulance-chasing moron takes on a case like this?! How f*n desperate do you have to be for money to take on something like this? The guy and his wife are morons, but the attorney is an even bigger douche!
@DeltaPurser: Even Charles Manson had a lawyer. It’s the cornerstone of our legal system.
Uh, yeah should have kept a record of the event. He knew it wasn’t his money.
Money is never “free”.
Did he really expect them to let him keep it? Banks tend to not just give away free money to people. Unless you have it in writing, from the president of the banking company, odds are your not suppose to have that money.
@RvLeshrac: Please read my last reply [and others], I assumed it was both data [email] and voice which have to be archived. Only data [email], voice depends on the size of the company or is entirely optional. Not sure how that part works out.
@Craig:
I stand corrected. You are also correct about the limit. [www.irs.gov]
I knew the IRS was going to get it’s hands on it in some way.
Dear Consumerist:
I recently deposited somewhere in the range of $280,000 in my bank account. When I checked the balance later in the day I found that it wasn’t there!
When I called my bank they told me they had no record of the transaction and that I hadn’t really deposited the money!
We went back and forth, I had the deposit slip and everything. After several months and getting lawyers involved the bank now tells me they were able to mysteriously “find” $103,000 of the original $280,000. No word on where the other $177,000 ended up!
Signed,
Furious!
From the news article:
“…thinking that an anonymous benefactor had given them an awesome gift of free money. They said they’d heard about things like that before, on TV.”
Really? I haven’t EVER. Has anybody ever heard of people getting free money given to them by an anonymous donor before?
“This lawsuit might actually help my client if it goes to trial with a jury of his peers,” said Thomas Dickey of Altoona, Starbird’s attorney. “He called the bank a couple of times to give the money back, and they told him it was his. It took them four months to say ‘oops,’ and in the meantime, he was spending money on legitimate things”
#1: “a couple of times”??? Sounds like he *might* have called the receptionist a couple of times and left “I have a problem with my account” messages in their inbox…
#2: “legitimate things”??? As if that: A) makes it ok to spend the money and B) how can you spend $160k in a couple of months on “legitimate things”?
This is like finding a purse with money but no I.D. on the sidewalk and spending it instead of turning it into the police. These people are essentially criminals, pure and simple.
This is funny. A bank can go “oops, we put $280K in the wrong account” ans everything is fine and dandy. But, if you go “oops I forgot to pay my credit card bill yesterday” to the same said bank they can charge you a late fee and raise your rates.
The guy should at least be able to get that.
@bonzombiekitty
Your analogy is wrong. The bank is the governing body of your account.
A closer analogy would be if the Department of Motor Vehicles (or Department of Transportation) came to your house, dropped off a car, gave you the keys and said that it was yours.
@headhot: Let me know how you get it there without having to pay taxes on it.
Hmmm…. sounds like shoddy actions to me. There have been at least 2 times when my bank has done the same thing to me. Just out of common sense, I check if everything is in order (to make sure nobody else on the account deposited anything) and if not, I don’t spend the money. If it’s not mine, I don’t spend it.
When did common sense go out the window?
the sad part of it is that this money was actually some depositor’s money.
I don’t see why people can feel entitled to money that they didn’t rightfully earn.
Seriously, he kind of deserves to go to jail for a major case of stupidity as well as theft. Banks accidentally put monies in wrong accounts all the time and usually correct these problems within hours, but it is a crime to take the money that is not yours.
To these morons that say that they would hide the money, withdraw it in cash etc, here’s a scenario for you. An armored car crashes outside your house. The doors open and a few sacks of cash fall onto your lawn. Do you actually believe that money belongs to you because it’s on your property?
I saw a story similar to this a few years back on Dateline or 20/20.
The story centerd on a poor woman in New York who suddenly started receiving large deposits. She did everything she could to get the bank to investigate but they refused so she took the money and started her own business.
When the bank FINALLY got around to looking into the error they found out that her account number and the account number for a UN fund were one number off and it was a clerical error that was sending the UN money to her.
I thought of that story when I saw this one.
Just gonna throw my 2 cents in here even though this is old news…
Bank error in your favor? It only happens when you play Monopoly. The customer knew damn well it wasn’t his money, and he had no business spending it. Don’t try to feed me that “They said I could!” BS. I don’t buy that for a second. No bank is going to tell you to spend the mystery money that wound up in your account. They have ways of checking that stuff out. IF you didn’t put the money there, then they can find out who did. I don’t buy it for a second. Customer is just trying to keep his butt out of jail.
@Daniel Alderman:
@mavrick67:
@james:
As I noted earlier, banks are well-known for screwing over customers even when the customer attempts to verify that everything is on the up-and-up.
The guy may be (and probably is) lying, but there are too many stories where the banks have been proven to be in the wrong for me to completely write off his defense.
@mavrick67:
Oh, and the scenario should be “If an armored car crashes outside of your house and some bags of money fall onto your lawn, the crash is cleaned up before you get home, you find the money, call the number on the bag, and they tell you to keep it because there’s no way they made a mistake and left some money behind…”
Maybe I missed it…but did he ever ask who or what company deposited the money into his account? BTW…new user, so be gentle
@RvLeshrac: Yes, ethically, if an armored car crashed outside of your house and they left one bag with a dollar sign on it full of money, you are obligated to give it to the bank. If the person says, “There’s no way we could have made a mistake.” then you talk to someone else, and continue to talk to someone else until it’s put right. If they still refuse, then you take the money to the police. (Well, actually, you could have just taken it to the police to begin with.)
This actually happened to me… but only about $18,000.00 worth.
I noticed it on a receipt after making a deposit, and told the teller it was wrong. She did everything she could to convince me that it was right! She even asked if I had any rich relatives…
I eventually ended up talking to the manager, who still refused to believe the bank made a mistake.
I didn’t touch the money, and a few weeks later it turned up that a woman who opened an account on the same day as me was either given my account number somehow, or accidentally used my number to make a deposit.
I got a ‘Thank You’ from the bank, but that was it.
@Daniel Alderman:
Ethically, you only have an obligation to make a reasonable attempt to return the money. If returning the money requires leaping through a flaming ring of spikes, etc.
Legal requirements may vary by state.
One month CD rates for today are 1.72%. If he had just taken the amount out put it in a one month CD and then stalled them for a month if they picked up on it immediately he would have around $5K.