The banking industry is heavily regulated because mistakes can be costly and can eliminate the public’s trust in these institutions. Nonetheless, mistakes do happen – like when one woman named Aprille Franks accidentally received $50,000 and got to keep it!
While mistakes like this are more frequent than they should be, many are soon resolved and the money is returned to its rightful owner. This woman, however, claims that she eventually gained a full legal right to keep the money! That's some good advice to hold on to in case something like this ever happens to you. Read on to find out how.
What would you do if you were suddenly $50,000 richer and didn't know why? Here's what Aprille Frank did
Image credits: epicaprille
"$50,000 is the amount of money that a credit union that I used to be a part of accidentally wired me to my bank account when I was in my 20s. I can go ahead and skip to the good part, which is I didn't go to jail and I didn't do anything wrong. And I was able to keep the money, every penny. So, one day, I was in my bedroom, and I was going through the mail. I open the mail, and I was wiring money already, because I knew I was going to be living there. And so we were kind of using that account for things that we were going to be doing together once I moved from Alabama to St. Louis. And while I'm there, I'm sitting in my room and I open up this mail, and it was like ‘wire confirmation’. Back then, they weren't sending emails. So it was like wire confirmation, for 49,700 dollars. I stood there and I was frozen."
"$50,000 is the amount of money that a credit union that I used to be a part of accidentally wired me to my bank account when I was in my 20s. I can go ahead and skip to the good part, which is I didn't go to jail and I didn't do anything wrong. And I was able to keep the money, every penny. So, one day, I was in my bedroom, and I was going through the mail. I open the mail, and I was wiring money already, because I knew I was going to be living there. And so we were kind of using that account for things that we were going to be doing together once I moved from Alabama to St. Louis. And while I'm there, I'm sitting in my room and I open up this mail, and it was like ‘wire confirmation’. Back then, they weren't sending emails. So it was like wire confirmation, for 49,700 dollars. I stood there and I was frozen."
After discovering the deposit, her mind started racing and she imagined some bad scenarios
Image credits: cottonbro studio (not the actual photo)
"I was like, oh my god, somebody is trying to set me up. I started running through my mind, like everyone who it could possibly be that sent me this money. And I was like, I had a friend that really was gambling at that time. I was like, did she drop…did she send this money to me? I was also working at this apartment complex as a manager. And the manager was kind of shady. So I'm like, is he trying to hide money and send it to me? I literally call them, I was just like, “Hey, how you doing? Did you send me any money to my bank account?” And they're like, “No”. So then I immediately... okay, I called the credit union. And I was like, “Hey, I got a wire notification…” which means that the money had been sitting there. It's been sitting there for at least a couple of days, at least two or three days. Things weren't as sophisticated then as they are now. So I didn't know until I got the letter. And I was like… now, at most, I might have had $1,500 of my own money in that bank account, okay. I didn’t have a lot of money at all at that time."
She did her due diligence, however, and eventually got to keep all $50,000!
Image credits: Marcus Aurelius (not the actual photo)
"And so I call them and they were like, “No, ma'am. It says… Is this your account number? Is this your name? Da-da-da-da-da.” And I was like… So the credit union wired the money to the other bank but it was a mistake. But they were insisting that there was no mistake. So I'm like, “I'm trying to tell y'all like…” I'm like, “Well, who sent it? Like, where did it come from?”. So then I went and I saw a lawyer. Because I was like, “What am I supposed to do with this money? What are my rights? What is the law?” And the lawyer told me exactly to do this. He said, “Report it again, document everything, don't touch any of the money for 30 days.” And he told me to post it somewhere public. I don't know if it was a newspaper or something to that effect. And he said, “If they don't claim it, then it's yours.” And that's exactly what happened. The bank refused to admit that they made a mistake. "
Here's what she did with it. Would you have spent it differently?
"What I do with the $50,000 at the bank accidentally wired me into my bank account. Let's talk about it. In short, I spent it but here's what I bought: I bought a house. I bought a second house that we flipped. Me and the guy that I was dating at the time, I bought a car, and we lived on it, and I lived off that money. I mean, I was working full time, I was making like $31,000 a year. I was working at this place called Beyond Housing in St. Louis. And it took me about a year and a half to spend all the money and they did call for the money back. They did call after a while and they asked me to return the money, but they didn't have any grounds"
Commenters were understandably envious. I was, too!
