Bank Error in My Favour

[notmyactualname]

No, I am not just in the middle of trying to buy Mayfair and all 4 stations!

 

This week my wife and I were moving money from one bank to another to pay all the bills.

 

The queues were very long, and so I joined the queue for bank Y. This was the bank where we were going to put the money in. My wife went to bank X to get the money out.

 

We had previous phoned bank X and asked for them to keep £1800 for us to take out.

 

My wife came into the bank and gave me a brown envelope with cash and then went off to do a couple of things in the town.

 

I went to the till of bank Y and gave them the brown envelope. I said to the lady that there was £1800 in the envelope. My baby was screaming so I went to pick him up while she counted it twice.

 

She gave me the receipt for the money and I left the bank.

 

When I met up with my wife again I gave her the receipt as she is more trustworthy than I with keeping little bits of paper. She read it and said "how did you give the bank £1800".

 

I said isn't that how much was supposed to be in the envelope you gave me.

 

She said "No, they only had £1500 available, so I only gave you £1500. I thought you would have realized." (Please let's not even go to the place where we ask how she could have thought I would have realized!).

 

Now I have bank X showing I have taken out £1500.

I have bank Y showing I have put in £1800.

 

I have receipts for both transactions.

 

My question: will the banks ever notice? Will anyone ever notice? Should I even care? If I contact the banks what will they do? If I don't contact the banks what will they do?

 

Or does this mean that Bank Y is funding my Christmas money this year?

 

Any advice / ideas would be helpful.

 

Thanks,

NMAM.

[slick132]

Hi NMAN and welcome to CAG.

 

As you are aware of the error, it's your responsibility to contact the bank and report it. Failure to do so could leave you exposed to allegation of fraud.

 

The error will, I'm sure, be quickly picked up by the bank when carrying out their till reconcilliations.

 

Do the right thing and contact the bank tomorrow. Looks like you'll have to fund Xmas yourselves again !!

[gyzmo]

The cashier should have obviously checked it, but Slick is correct. whilst it is possible that the bank may not notice (this happened to a friend but involved a much smaller amount and the bank did not find out), morally and legally you need to contact the bank to let them know.

[davethorp]

While I'm not questioning the legal and moral implications, I have to ask, even if the bank did pick this up how would it get linked to the OP. Unless the OP was the only person that cashier served that day, it could have been anyone!

[Bookworm]

As you are aware of the error, it's your responsibility to contact the bank and report it. Failure to do so could leave you exposed to allegation of fraud.

 

The error will, I'm sure, be quickly picked up by the bank when carrying out their till reconcilliations.

 

Do the right thing and contact the bank tomorrow. Looks like you'll have to fund Xmas yourselves again !!

Actually, I'd disagree (sorry, Slick and Gyzmo!). It is the responsability of the bank to check that it all tallies.

 

However, before our new member gets over-excited, I'd say check your bank statement, the receipt may say £1800, but the teller may well have keyed in £1500 anyway (depending on whether receipt was handwritten or printed out).

[bobbyh99]

Just a thought but if it was the other way around and it wasn't in your favour, do you honesty think the bank would have told you!!!!

 

BobbyH

[TheChancellor]

Quite a dilema.As stated the correct thing to do is phone them up & tell them.

 

... or you could wait for them to write to you.

 

I once wrote a cheque to my second bank.The funds moved across but weren't deducted from the first account.Unfortunately it wasn't a nice "round" figure like yours and it showed up about 6 weeks later.

 

My phone wasn't working at the time.

[seftonview]

I doubt very much that if you opted to keep quiet, you'd risk allegations of Fraud.

 

Even if you did, the circumstances given do not meet all of the elements of the offence, namely that you:

 

made (you did this)

a false representation (you did this)

dishonestly (you didn't do this)

knowing that the representation was or might be untrue or misleading (you didn't do this)

with intent to make a gain for himself or another, to cause loss to another or to expose another to risk of loss. (you didn't do this)

 

(See Section 2, Fraud Act 2006)

 

Chances are that they won't be able to demonstrate that it was your transaction specifically that has caused the cashflow to be out (bearing in mind that, if they do accuse you, they'd ultimately have to demonstrate on balance of probabilities that it was, rather than you demonstrating that it wasn't).

 

My 2p.

[Conniff]

But how do we know that it is not the first bank that made the error. The op says that she counted it 'twice', is a cashier likely to make a counting error twice? If the answer is yes, then it could have easily been the paying out banks error.

[slick132]

Hi Sefton,

 

Call it what you want. I used the word fraud loosely.

 

The OP knows that an error appears to have been made leaving them with £300 more than believe they paid in.

 

Leaving aside the moral duty to check and sort this out, is the OP exposed to ANY possible allegation for wrong-doing? Theft, deception, etc.

 

If not, are most of you saying that OP should do nothing and hope for the best.

 

Haha, I'll bet this is all a waste of time and the error was corrected at close of business anyway.

 

It does seem strange that the receiving cashier counted the money twice without noticing it was £300 short.

 

Or is NOTMYACTUALNAME really........................Derren Brown.

[seftonview]

Leaving aside the moral duty to check and sort this out, is the OP exposed to ANY possible allegation for wrong-doing? Theft, deception, etc.

 

The elements of the offence of theft are markedly similar to those for fraud...

 

A person is guilty of theft if he -

dishonestly (there is no dishonesty if the OP did not know there was less money in the envelope than he stated)

appropriates property (this was done)

belonging to another (this was done)

with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it (if he doesn't inform the bank of their error he has permanently deprived, but the test isn't met because he did not intend to permanently deprive when he paid the money in)

 

(See section 1 of the Theft Act 1968 )

 

There is no offence of dishonesty on its own.

 

No other offence appears to have been committed prima facie.

 

If not, are most of you saying that OP should do nothing and hope for the best.

 

I'm just playing Devil's Advocate :grin:

[slick132]

I'm just playing Devil's Advocate :grin:

I realise that! Some of us, however, can be more Advocate than Devil.

 

So, if you don't mind me asking, how would YOU advise NMAN:-

 

1) Legally

 

2) Morally

 

[seftonview]

I realise that! Some of us, however, can be more Advocate than Devil.

 

So, if you don't mind me asking, how would YOU advise NMAN:-

 

1) Legally

 

No crime has been committed and, whilst the police could in principle be involved, no reasonable prosecutor would charge and no reasonable jurist would convict.

 

In civil terms, if the bank could prove that the mistake occurred, and that the OP was the beneficiary, they would be able to recover the money in civil proceedings. However, firstly I'd doubt that they could pinpoint a specific transaction as having been the cause, secondly I'd doubt that even if they could, they could gather sufficient evidence to be successful in court, and thirdly if they had managed these two, or at least were bluffing, I'd put them on strict proof of the same before I parted with the money.

 

There's no duty to notify them of their error.

 

2) Morally

 

I don't think I'd have a moral objection to keeping the money - there has been no deception; it is a relatively minuscule sum of money compared with the profit a bank makes; and I doubt the bank would go to too much trouble if the tables were turned.

 

That said, if the "victim" were a person, or a charity/good cause, the money would go straight back.

[trevormax]

I would have to agree with Coniff in asking how a cashier who sits there and counts money all day 5 days a week could posibly mis-count £300, if it were a few pound then yes that is easy enough, or at most £50 (mis-count one £50 note). But £300 doesn't seem possible unless the cashier is very careless in what they are doing.

 

I would check both accounts to see if the numbers match up as it may just be an error on your receipts.

 

Personally, if the bank has made the error, I wouldn't inform the banks and just wait for them to come to me with enough proof that i owe them money. I would also put the extra £300 away somewhere safe in case they do come back later to get their money.

[yourbank]

All i want to add to this, is that the cashier would have a difference of £300 on their till. This could potentially lead to them being sacked(worse case scanario) but they are more than likely to find that amount and debit the account the remaining £300. The cashier did make a mistake and they did debit less than they should have and the repercussions for them could be no job.

I am not making any further responses to this thread.

[seftonview]

All i want to add to this, is that the cashier would have a difference of £300 on their till. This could potentially lead to them being sacked(worse case scanario) but they are more than likely to find that amount and debit the account the remaining £300. The cashier did make a mistake and they did debit less than they should have and the repercussions for them could be no job.

I am not making any further responses to this thread.

 

The return of the money would not likely save their job either - the issue therein being that the cashier has demonstrated negligence. This argument isn't a legitimate one to follow because the mistake is the fault of the cashier for not doing the job properly. This may be harsh, but it's true.

[blue4ever]

tbh can you really see a cashier making such a mistake i don`t think so

there may be two things that happened

 

1. wife got £1800 out of bank 1 and £1800 was paid in

 

2. This is a fairy story, proftional people like cashiers do not make mistakes like this