Posted on 01/16/2009 7:09:12 PM PST by smokingfrog
HUNDREDS of people queued at a cashpoint machine after it began dishing out extra money - and the giveaway lasted SIX hours.
It spewed out £60 every time it was asked for £30. Customers used several debit cards more than five times - and then phoned pals to tell them to join the queue for the Nationwide machine at the BP garage on Barton Road, Stretford.
Shan Cliff, 21, said: "Most people have taken out hundreds of pounds. No one's going to turn down free money. I don't know whether it will show in our accounts but it's their mistake not ours."
A Nationwide official said: "We're looking into it and we can't say yet whether the customers will have to pay the money back."
The machine is believed to have started paying out the wrong amounts at 11am yesterday (Thursday) and carried out until around 4.20pm.
The screen then went blank and the system began rebooting itself. But after showing a brief `temporarily out of service' message, it began dishing out the extra cash again.
A 33-year-old man, who benefited to the tune of £150 but did not want to be named, said: "The banks have had enough off us so it's good to get a little back.
"My friend texted me about 2pm. I couldn't believe it. You had to wait a while because people are putting their cards in five and six times but it was well worth it."
At one point, fifty people were in the queue.
Matt Casey, 21, who works in the Subway restaurant at the garage, said: "There's been a queue out there all day."
(Excerpt) Read more at manchestereveningnews.co.uk ...
I would have been calling the police.
It’s stealing, even from a bank.
The bank will figure out who got what.
I’m with you. Stealing is stealing, whether it’s robbing a bank with a gun, or taking extra money from an ATM.
Now you can't catch me, oh,baby you can't catch me, 'Cause if you get too close, you know I'm gone like a cool breeze
I wouldn’t be there in that line.
That’s just wrong.
If I was starving...sure. These people don’t sound like they were starving.
If you were starving, why not just sneak into your neighbor’s house and take their food instead?
Take the money and run - it’s rich liberals’ money!
The bank and authorities will shortly know who the crooks are.
These ATM thieves could find themselves in hot water.
Why was you starving?
Free money? Take it!
Maybe it’s part of the “TARP” ? /s
Then again, the celebrations of Darwinism going on this year and his war against science and morality explain a lot of the collapse.
This is so wrong. Typical socialists think this is “free money.” Right, this is plain and simple stealing in my book.
In this case, it stands for Take All Remaining Pounds!
We know what our new secy of the Treasury would do.
I herd on the radio of a couple who deposited a thousand dollar check and the bank added a couple of zeros and they withdrew all the money quite their jobs moved south and when they caught up with them they only had 50 grand left and the bank wanted all their money back.
When I was 9 years old there was a gumball machine that was stuck outside an A&P grocery store. You could spin the coin dial without a penny in it, and it would dispense a gumball. I got smacked/grounded when my dad found out about it. That was 1969. I got maybe 4 free gumballs. Wouldn’t do it again today. I remember it was a black licorice gumball that I didn’t even like.
Nah, they'll find themselves overdrawn. They asked for 30 pounds and the machine gave them sixty pounds OF THEIR OWN MONEY. That doesn't seem to have registered. All the bank has to do is fix the entry, they know nobody's going to complain.
In this case, it wasn’t the bank’s money. The patrons were making withdrawals from their own accounts. The machine just gave them too much of their own money. There’s going to be one of those mass head-slapping “duh” moments when they figure that out.
I don't think that's what happened. I think the bank statement will say that 30 pounds was taken from their account, even though they got sixty. The extra 30 will not be recorded as having come from their accounts.
Doh! (slapping forehead) You're right.
I’m just being realistic.
I have never starved, but I understand human behavior enough to know that people taking money from an ATM is pretty benign thing compared to what people are capable of if they are starving.
No excuse for what these people did.
I don't doubt you heard this but I do doubt it is accurate.
Every branch of every bank must "prove" at the end of the day. This means that debits MUST equal credits. Every check cashed must show a record of actual cash dispensed and every deposit recorded must be connected to checks and cash to exactly equal the deposited amount as recorded by the teller. In this case a deposit transaction recorded by a teller for $1,000,000 MUST have as an offset cash and checks associated with that deposit that equal $1,000,000. Since this was not the case the branch would have been out of balance by the difference between the recorded amount and the actual amount of the check or check and cash. Plus, unless the check was drawn on that very bank they would not have been allowed to withdraw all the funds for up to 5 days depending on whether it was an out of State bank or a local one.
There is a transaction tape in each ATM which records the amount of cash dispensed and which ATM card was calling for the cash. It will be an easy matter for the bank to link the cash dispensed to the ATM card number and then to the card holder.
They will have to repay the money.
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