Every so often, a story with the same premise will roll into your newsfeed: person wakes up with a huge amount of mystery cash in their bank account, said person goes on a wild shopping spree. Free money is a dream come true, but it’ll quickly turn into a nightmare if you withdraw it – spending a bank deposit that isn’t yours is against the law.
Most recently, an American couple caught a $120 000 USD windfall. They immediately spent their unearned dough on several vehicles, but karma is an unstoppable force. Not only are they facing theft charges, but now they owe overdraft fees too – a lose, and lose again situation.
One of the accused said that she had given $15K to “friends in need of money”, but unfortunately that doesn’t help her case. It doesn’t matter what you do with the money – you could use it to discover the cure for cancer for all the law cares. If the money ain’t in the bank, it’s stolen, period.
In Australia, sadly ‘finders, keepers’ doesn’t apply. Fraud charges have become the precedent for knowingly spending a bank deposit that doesn’t belong to you, as a Cairns man found out the hard way.
The Financial Ombudsman Service says in its factsheet about the ePayments code: “You should not spend or withdraw the money transferred into your account by mistake because it is not legally yours and you have to pay it back.”
If in doubt, call the bank. By alerting them to the mix-up and leaving the money alone, you’ve done the right thing, and can’t get in any trouble. After all, it’s not your fault that someone couldn’t proofread.
Obviously, the chances of it happening to you are pretty slim, and the likelihood of a $25 million payday even slimmer. But little mistakes do happen, considering Aussies have made more than $1.5 billion in direct transfers this year so far.
The upshot is that if it’s been more than seven months and the mistake hasn’t been corrected, you’re no longer obligated to return the money. Legally, that is. Morally, it’s probably best to send it back from whence it came.