Originally published at: Bank accidentally deposited $50 billion in a family's bank account | Boing Boing
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Can they keep the interest generated over those four days that the money was in their account?
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Inflation is terrible. When I was a kid…
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Hahahaha! Regular people don’t get interest anymore!
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I was wondering what 4 days interest on $50B would work out to. The bank wouldn’t even miss it but it would mean something to that family.
Seems like this idea that money is created by banks has some merit after all…
[ciphering]
One year w $50,000 earns 1,756.04 so 1.756 million for 4 days might be about $20,000, from what I can work out.
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The bank should at lest buy them dinner.
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I want to know what bank you are using that a standard savings account (let alone a checking account or other non-interest bearing) is 3.5%. I believe I’m either getting 0.2% or 0.02% on my much-greater-than-50k savings account…and making dozens of dollars per year.
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Sadly, most accounts I’ve seen get interest monthly on the lowest value that was in the account during that month’s period, if they get interest at all. Savings accounts get interest, chequing accounts get fees.
And best of all, when a deposit of that magnitude (or even only a few thousand) gets put in, the bank also automatically notifies the government, so that you can be taxed on it, even if you don’t get to keep the money. Hopefully the bank remembered to send a correction there as well.
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A possible scenario to get rich from this:
Open an account in one of themore secretive tax havens and transfer all the money there, preferably going through several countries to make it harder to track. When the bank reacts, the money is gone. Taking the money is a crime, but the bank is going to want that money back pretty desperately, so you agree to return in it exchange for a 0,1% finders fee and immunity from prosecution. They may take the offer rather than a slow and costly process of litigation to find out where the money is and get it back.
I suspect money laundering laws may prevent you from moving the money in the first place, but on the other hand, if the bank was careless once they can be again.
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Let’s assume 0.02% of interest p.a. For the four days, that makes (4/365) or 1.1% of that, or 2.2*10^-6 altogether. That times $50 billion is… about $110 thousand. Not enough to live the rest of your life on, but still a lot of money!
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immunity from prosecution
In the U.S., the victim of a crime does not have the authority to prosecute or to grant immunity. That’s up to a district attorney or a U.S. attorney depending on the jurisdiction. “Pressing charges,” as used in TV and movies, is mostly fiction. One could ask the prosecutor to pursue (or drop) charges, but they are not bound to honor such requests.
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Personal heroes of mine:
Cops/banks caught them in the end, of course. I prefer to link to the happier part of the story…
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I had a bank error deposit 5k in my account and it was terrifying waiting for them to admit the error and reverse the deposit for that little amount.
I can’t imagine 700% showing up
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When you consider that the bank doesn’t have $50 billion sitting around spending it can’t really be "theft, can it? I mean this money was “created” out of thin air by an accounting error. What IS money, really? When you consider that most money never exists as currency, only as bookkeeping entries.
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“Not pressing charges” usually just means the victim would not want to testify.
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Currency is bookkeeping entries.
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“Laundry” sent to the wrong family. 
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That is quite clearly extortion and the bank does not get to make decisions on immunity from prosecution.
