Receiving an unexpected payment

Lioness_Twinkletoes

Wonder if you can help with a hypothetical situation/debate?

Person receives a payment of £10k into their bank account. It is unexpected and not from anyone they know. So, it has been sent by a person who has made an error when making a faster payment.

Question - does the recipient have to give it back and can the bank forcibly remove it?

I know that the bank would not give out details of the person who has received the payment to the person that made it - but they will know which of their customers it went to.

Morally - it should be returned. Legally - can this be enforced?

eskbanker

Legally - it should be returned! It's not the recipient's money, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/7269507.stm for a cautionary tale....

Practically - there are some challenges with enforcement but it's unlikely that anyone would simply ignore £10K going missing.

bengal-stripe

Lioness_Twinkletoes wrote: »

I know that the bank would not give out details of the person who has received the payment to the person that made it - but they will know which of their customers it went to.

But the bank will give out your name (oops - it's hypothetical) to the police or the courts if requested. It is a criminal offence and the equivalent of "Theft by finding".

And 10k isn't enough to emigrate permanently.

le_loup

Why are you even having such immoral thoughts?
Did your mother/father not talk to you about morals and that stealing is wrong under all circumstances?

Lioness_Twinkletoes

Hahah, loving the moralistic posters. Honestly, it is a genuine hypothetical scenario, a debate between myself and a friend. I did think that there were steps that the bank could take (Police etc) whereas my friend thought no action could be taken due to data protection.

I once transferred £4k to a wrong account and it was the worst feeling in the world so I certainly wouldn't inflict it on anyone else.

Thanks for the responses

eskbanker

Lioness_Twinkletoes wrote: »

my friend thought no action could be taken due to data protection

Data protection is a convenient excuse or cover for many things but there are exemptions within the Data Protection Act which allow details to be disclosed to the relevant authorities for crime prevention/detection purposes - the receiver's bank is hardly going to publish details back to the sender (hopefully!) but will be obliged to pursue the recipient on the sender's behalf and to pass details on to police and/or courts if it got that far.

matttye

bengal-stripe wrote: »

But the bank will give out your name (oops - it's hypothetical) to the police or the courts if requested. It is a criminal offence and the equivalent of "Theft by finding".

And 10k isn't enough to emigrate permanently.

Theft by finding is not an offence in itself, but just way of describing the type of theft.

What the OP is describing is equivalent to theft, full stop.

El_Torro

Lioness_Twinkletoes wrote: »

I once transferred £4k to a wrong account and it was the worst feeling in the world so I certainly wouldn't inflict it on anyone else.

Did you get the money back? How did you try to track it down?

Sounds like you already have experience regarding this hypothetical situation anyway!

Lioness_Twinkletoes

El_Torro wrote: »

Did you get the money back? How did you try to track it down?

Sounds like you already have experience regarding this hypothetical situation anyway!

Not exactly, no. The money I transferred was to an account held by my husband, so I knew where it had gone. It was an account that had a defaulted loan attached to it. The money was intended for another account. I (eventually) got it back as we had an agreement in place to repay the loan and was keeping to it. Had we not, the bank could have used the whole amount to offset the loan.

I am not a troll. Everyone has to join at some time - and a quick look at my past posts will demonstrate that I take this forum seriously. I am intrigued though, is there an arbitrary cut off date after which a person is not accused of being a troll?

stclair

matttye wrote: »

Theft by finding is not an offence in itself, but just way of describing the type of theft.

What the OP is describing is equivalent to theft, full stop.

Abit of light heart reading!!

http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/s_to_u/sentencing_manual/dishonestly_retaining_a_wrongful_credit/

matttye

stclair wrote: »

Abit of light heart reading!!

http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/s_to_u/sentencing_manual/dishonestly_retaining_a_wrongful_credit/

This isn't dishonestly retaining a wrongful credit, it's theft. It sounds like it should be the former, but it's not, because s24A(2A) of the Theft Act 1968 states: -

'[F2(2A)A credit to an account is wrongful to the extent that it derives from—

(a)theft;

(b)blackmail;

(c)fraud (contrary to section 1 of the Fraud Act 2006); or

(d)stolen goods.]'

And s24A(1) states:

'(1)A person is guilty of an offence if—

(a)a wrongful credit has been made to an account kept by him or in respect of which he has any right or interest;

(b)he knows or believes that the credit is wrongful; and

(c)he dishonestly fails to take such steps as are reasonable in the circumstances to secure that the credit is cancelled.'

The hypothetical situation the OP refers to is that the credit randomly appears, I.e. The recipient is not expecting the money. It is therefore impossible for the recipient to know or believe that the credit derives from theft/blackmail/fraud/stolen goods and they are therefore not guilty of that offence.

It's plain ol' theft.