Money sent to 3rd party wrong account

tehone

robatwork wrote: »

Why is he a thief? For all you know he was in an overdraft and all your money has done is reduce the overdraft. So he may still be in a position of "insufficient funds" as Santander have said.

Yes he owes all of you the money paid in error, but you're making assumptions.

Please do bear this in mind!

All of you who paid, where not conned by the account holder who got the money. s/he did not try and obtain money from you under false pretences. You actively made these payments, based on inaccurate information that you were given.

Also I'm fairly certain that even if they wanted to repay the money, they will have no idea/method of repaying it - they won't have details of where the money came from.

And also as noted paying money into an overdrawn account won't necessarily give the account holder the ability to repay in any case.

Sad to say, but the treasurer should have checked properly and I would argue that it is them that is liable, for any monies that can't be recovered - I can see no way in which this is a police matter

eskbanker

tehone wrote: »

Also I'm fairly certain that even if they wanted to repay the money, they will have no idea/method of repaying it - they won't have details of where the money came from.

That's not how it works - by virtue of HSBC contacting Santander regarding a payment claimed to have been made in error, Santander will have contacted the recipient to say that if s/he agrees that it was an error then they (Santander) will arrange for the payment to be reversed.

xylophone

if s/he agrees that it was an error

And if s/he doesn't...?

If the person in question has been advised of the erroneous payments and refuses to repay, it seems he is guilty of an offence.

https://www.money.co.uk/guides/can-you-keep-money-accidentally-paid-into-your-bank-account.htm

https://www.theguardian.com/money/blog/2013/feb/09/bank-error-your-favour-spending-it-theft

Therefore the police should be involved?

eskbanker

The message relayed back by Santander wasn't refusal to repay but insufficient funds to do so, which could suggest that the recipient accepted the error but was unable to refund, potentially because the erroneously-sent funds weren't enough to take an overdrawn account back into the black (or back into arranged limits)?

In situations where the recipient disputes that it was an error then the banks aren't able to arbitrate when two people are making conflicting claims, but I don't believe that the police can force the recipient's bank to disclose the recipient's details in response to an (effectively unsupported) allegation of theft made by the sender, although a court could....