£21,000 paid into account, mistake

john59_2

Afriend checked his current account, on the 7th of Feb a fund transfer was made from a large institution. Nearly £21,000 was put into his account. Is it his responsibility to report this?? I feel like buying a new car, but I know its not mine.
Advice please

melancholly

i'm sure that when/if they notice your friend will have to pay it all back - if you spend it, it may technically be fraud (someone else on here will know!) so i wouldn't bother. i'd play safe and report it, but that may be just me!

mountainofdebt

Its not yours...the institution will realise their mistake and come back for the money........and you'll be in really doggy do if you have spent it and can't afford to replace it.

elisebutt65

Put it in a high interest savings account until they ask for it back

skintscotsman

elisebutt65 wrote:

Put it in a high interest savings account until they ask for it back

Good plan.

Similarly, £198 was paid into my current account a couple of weeks ago and neither myself nor the bank can figure out where on earth it is has come from!

A couple of days after it arrived in my account, I phoned the bank and asked them to look into it. To be honest, I'd rather they took it back immediately rather than take it back after I have spent it therefore leaving me £200 short in a month or so.

Anyway, the banked looked into it and they know very little about the payment!!!!! Both myself and the bank tried to relate it to Standing Orders and Direct Debits but to no avail!!!!

Tis a mystery.

Savvy_Sue

I had a similar situation with £1400 appearing in one of my bank accounts in one large and two small payments over the space of a month. They were able to give me the name of the company they'd come from - always the same one - but initially did nothing about taking the money back. On my 3rd or 4th phone call, they said they would now block any further payments into my account from that source. And they took the money back. I was like skintscotsman, I prefer knowing that the money in my account is MINE and therefore spendable!

tigs78

My friend works for a large bank often dealing with massive transfers, according to her although you cannot keep the sum that was paid in to your account in error you are entitled to keep the interest that the sum has accrued...

Stonk

tigs78 wrote:

My friend works for a large bank often dealing with massive transfers, according to her although you cannot keep the sum that was paid in to your account in error you are entitled to keep the interest that the sum has accrued...

Hee-hee. Where I work (not saying), I'm involved with "call accounts" (which are essentially instant access deposit accounts for companies, where they put funds they might need to "call" on at short notice). Many of them have staggering sums of money in them - billions of euros, that kind of magnitude. It would be wonderful if, even just for one single day, one of them could accidentally be transferred into my personal account and I could keep the interest! It amazes me to see interest accruing at a rate of several hundred thousand pounds per DAY.

nemo183

First of all, as everyone has said, you are not entitled to this money. Since it is such a considerable sum, it might be worth finding out if you have a legal duty to report it to the bank.

I've had a similar experience twice, though sadly for lesser sums.

The first was when, as a penniless student, I found that £400 had been mistakenly paid into my account. I'm somewhat ashamed to say that I took out the money, closed the account, and never heard another word.

More recently, during a tax investigation, I was asked to provide all my personal bank statements to the tax man going back five years. Now I must admit, this did cover a period of time when my finances were in somewhat of a mess, and I had resorted in that time-honoured method of filing, unopened, all my bank statements and credit card statements behind the clock in the hall.

Since my current account was fluctuating wildly between +/- £10,000, and I wasn't really managing it properly, when I eventually went through all my statements I found that that a sum of around £3,500 had been paid in by mistake. Naturally enough, this didn't go down very well with the tax man. I contacted my bank to find out what had happened, and they were adament that I had visited my branch and paid in around £2000 in cash, plus around 20 cheques of around £1500. I knew this was impossible, as I had never visited the branch where my account was held, as it was on the otherside of the country. They insisted I had, but were unable to produce any supporting documentation. They certainly didn't want the money back.

To my surprise, the Tax Man believed my story was true, and then gave me the even better news that "Bank Errors in Your Favour" are not taxable.

BWZN93

The problem with banks is that the 'recieving' bank keeps very little information on what has come in and from where. The 'outgoing' however, does have a lot more information and is obliged to keep it for at least 6 years. When the person who the money was originally intended for kicks up a fuss - it will be looked at and im sure they will see the wrong account number that it was sent to, will want it back and are quite within thier rights to take it without notice. Transferring it to a high interest account might be a mistake if you dont usually keep that amount in the current account because when they take it back you are going to be massively overdrawn.

Its up to you whether you contact them or not but I wouldnt go spending it - for at least a couple of years.

Jo xx

Chris4817

Hi,

It is a criminal offence to 'retain a wrongful credit'.

You know it is not yours and you must make steps to pay it back.

That is the law anyway!