<p>[‘I</a> would do it over again, and I wouldn’t take a copper penny’ | KOMO News - Seattle, Washington | Local & Regional](<a href=“http://www.komonews.com/news/local/45056517.html]'I”>http://www.komonews.com/news/local/45056517.html)</p>
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<p>She knew it wasn’t hers- so she found out who it belonged to & gave it back.
Nice to see some honest people out there for a change.</p>
<p>That’s a great story – it is especially nice that the publicity led to some donations coming her way.</p>
<p>I’d point out that she wasn’t merely being honest – she was being smart. </p>
<p>If a bank makes a mistake and puts money in the wrong account … sooner or later the bank will find out about it and come looking for the money. The bank would have a legal right to recover the money – and there is no way she could have claimed down the line that she didn’t know the money didn’t belong to her. (It would be different if there was a small error, such as a few hundred – something within the historic range of bank balances)</p>
<p>There are 2 kinds of “found” money – money that is untraceable, and money that is easily traceable. This money fell in the latter category.</p>
<p>She did the right thing. I can’t even keep the wrong change someone gives me :)</p>
<p>The same thing happened to me, though only about $70K. I didn’t touch it. The bank figured out where it was supposed to have gone.</p>
<p>My bank mistakingly deposited about $1000 several years ago …didn’t touch it for the same reason.</p>
<p>Wow - the other day I found a $10 bill in the ATM that the previous customer did not pick up, I made the security guard go over the tape to see who was there before me so I could give it back. I can’t believe THAT much money…I am sure it would have been caught in an audit or something if she had kept it</p>
<p>We had a CC member with a daughter that received too much from an IRS refund and that seemed like a nightmare. It’s no big deal - just let them know and they’ll eventually take care of it. Mistakes happen - there are programming errors and human errors. The person losing the money will eventually complain and it will get straightened out.</p>
<p>What a very nice story.</p>
<p>That’s nice, but if there’s a mistake, it’s the job of the person who made it to fix it. Following that principle, if there’s a bank error in my favor, I’m not telling them. It’s their responsibility to check, not mine. If they didn’t bother checking and lose money, too bad.</p>
<p>If I “found” an extra $277,000 in my bank account I would definitely inform the bank and have the money returned to its rightful owner. This is the lesson we want to teach our children ($277,000 is enough to get you in trouble, but not enough to change your life!!!) Now, if I found $10 million in my account… I would wire it offshore and split! :D</p>
<p>I love the title of this thread - I was expecting something completely different. I expected it to be about the cost of a top private college education. My reflexive reaction to the question was that I would spend it on a top private college education for my chlld! Now I feel so much better - because that is exactly what I am doing.</p>
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I don’t think it was amazing and is something most people would do since most people are honest. This lady is clearly an honest person of integrity so she informed the bank of the error.</p>
<p>If she hadn’t have done this she would likely have been held liable for it. Keeping something like this that doesn’t belong to you is dishonest and could result in real issues once the bank figured out their error.</p>
<p>I don’t understand why some people would take the attitude that it wasn’t their mistake so they’ll just keep it. They’d have real legal issues if they ever spent the money or any interest gained on the money so they may as well have some integrity and just immediately inform the bank of its error.</p>
<p>They’d really have legal issues if it were the bank instead of the IRS.</p>
<p>Our bank once linked H’s and my ATM cards to the wrong account. We used our cards for at least a month before I finally figured out something wasn’t right. After withdrawing money one day, I happened to glance at the account balance on the receipt and…WHOA!!! No way we had that much money in our account. I immediately went into the bank and alerted them to the problem. Turns out our cards were linked to the account of a business associate of my H. It was an extremely awkward situation, especially since the business associate and his wife felt they had to explain the very large sum in their checking account to H and me!</p>
<p>On the day we brought our newborn son home form the hospital, we got a letter from the IRS that we owed $20k in backtaxes. H called and found out the SSN was wrong and it was all a mistake. Whew! I wished we had kept that letter for S’s baby book. I would’ve rather have found “money” in our bank account!</p>