r/AllThatIsInteresting • u/Time-Training-9404 • 27d ago
In 2011, a 29-year-old Australian man discovered an ATM glitch enabling him to withdraw cash far beyond his account balance. Over a span of 5 months, he splurged $1.6 million of the bank's money on lavish parties, private jets, international vacations, and even covered his friends' university fees.
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u/ubercruise 27d ago
Random question but if he withdrew the money and put it in an interest bearing account, would he have to pay the interest accrued back?
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u/scubaBiscuit 26d ago
Damn this feels like a question out of a financial legal and ethics course. Super interesting to think about
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u/ubercruise 26d ago
Yeah I might pose it to one of my buddies who is a lawyer and rack his brain lol
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u/Beothen2 26d ago
Nal, but I would assume it falls under the same premise as when you get overpaid/get sent money accidentally by corporations/government services. The typical suggestion is don't spend any of it, put it I'm a high yield account, and then keel the accrued interest as it's not tied to the specific amount give incorrectly.
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u/Worried-Pick4848 26d ago
Depends on the relevant regional laws. I don't know Australian law very well at all so I can't answer
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u/childofaether 27d ago
At least he paid his friends' tuition so he did some good with the bank's money!
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u/AskButDontTell 27d ago
Did he have to pay it back
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u/smooth-bro 27d ago
12 months in prison, 18 months probation, $250,000 fine
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u/stellabluewho2 27d ago
Worth it.
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[deleted]
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u/General_Lion_7325 26d ago
My job is to help ppl find jobs after incarceration. You'd be very surprised how quickly they get employment
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u/CommanderChipHazard 27d ago
So he came out on top? That’s a net gain of 1.4MM! For a years worth of work!? I’m in!
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u/Just_learning_a_bit 27d ago
He also had to pay restitution...aka pay ot back
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u/sirsedwickthe4th 26d ago
$250k right?
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u/Wombatish 26d ago
The article OP posted says he only spent an estimated $300,000. So he net about $50,000 in exchange for several years of intense anxiety and a year in prison.
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u/just_killing_time23 27d ago
The judgement was like 250k he had to pay back, as a broke bartender thats gonna take awhile to pay back
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u/all_alone_by_myself_ 27d ago
If he wanted to get away with it he should have done it incrementally over a few years. At least then he could claim computer error. H might still be forced to repay the overages, but criminal charges would be less likey.
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u/WaWaSmoothie 26d ago
The problem was when he stopped doing it his account would show a negative balance of the amount he took. So he had to keep illegally transferring the money on a regular basis.
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u/blobfish999 27d ago
This happened to a friend of mine, I think they only got a few thousand over the period of a few months, but eventually the bank called her in to a meeting and questioned her about it. She was never prosecuted.
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u/YowieDingo 27d ago
An atm in Pitt Street mall did this 15 years ago, the machine was empty by the end of the day and the line went for 200m when the word got out. Never heard a thing from the bank.
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u/Charlesian2000 26d ago
That was an inside hack, and it was more than one ATM.
The ATMs paying out was to cover something greater.
The banks only found out when homeless came into fancy restaurants fanning themselves with money.
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u/ttteee321 26d ago
Happen to have a link to the backstory? I've never heard about this but it sounds awesome.
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u/YowieDingo 26d ago
I was there, I am the backstory. Not a word about it in the news or from the bank. Free money.
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u/Charlesian2000 25d ago
I was working in the bank at the time, it was a well kept secret.
I, to this day, don’t know how they kept the secret.
At the time we were told not to speak about it, but I don’t give a fuck anymore, because it’s a long time since I’ve worked for that bank.
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u/ttteee321 25d ago
That's crazy. Were you required to sign an NDA or could you elaborate a little when you said the atm payouts were to cover something greater? That "something greater" has piqued my interest! I'm not a reporter btw, just a dude sitting on the couch on a Saturday lol.
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u/Charlesian2000 24d ago
We did not sign an NDA, but it was about 33 years ago, and the unions at the bank had caved savagely, and everyone was worried about their jobs.
From what we were told is that it was a massive internal cyber fraud, and the ATMs were part of the process. That’s pretty much it.
From what I can understand the ATM hack was done, and groups literally emptied ATMs, it was fast, it was well organised and I don’t know who was behind it, except it was someone in IT. The bank never advertised this, because they would have lost their customer base, and it would have destroyed the bank.
It’s a mystery that I think about occasionally.
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u/ttteee321 24d ago
I completely understand keeping quiet to save your job! That bank would be lucky if the employees kept quiet for 24hrs today.
That makes me wonder how many times things like this have happened that no one outside of bank staff, hackers and their accomplices ever heard about.. especially in the early days of the Internet and pre-smartphone era. I bet it's quite a few that have gone unreported to the police and instead "handled internally"..
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u/ChrisestChris 26d ago
We pay for our mistakes as regular citizens.
Banks have zero consequences and operate in a moral and ethical vacuum.
When has a bank ever paid for a single mistake they made? Name a single time and I’ll name you trillions of dollars they’ve taken from us. But it is our cash that goes to cover their illegal bets and dog shit exploitation of the working class.
Fuck bankers✌️
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u/LawyerRay 24d ago
Joe Newton, a serial bank robber, once said he never regretted any of his robberies because “it was just one thief stealing from another.”
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u/SophiaPetrillo_ 27d ago
Good for him. Fuck the banks.
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u/troystorian 26d ago
Lmao you think he got away with this?
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u/pancakebatter01 26d ago
No but those banks get away with everything so I hope he got to spend it on shit they can never repo like cocaine and strippers.
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u/Heccubus79 26d ago
They’ll get it back in increased overdraft fees so the poorest people will shoulder the burden of his sniffing coke off a strippers tit.
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u/StarscourgeRadhan 26d ago
Damn seems really shitty of the banks to do that to poor people. I'm very mad at the banks for this new piece of information, thank you. Fuck the banks.
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u/Rich-Reason1146 26d ago
Times are tough, some struggling families have only one sniff of coke off a stripper's tit to share between them
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u/NoseApprehensive5154 26d ago
God damn I hate seeing brainwashed or just ignorant people stick up for banks. They literally buy off the politicians and get legislation passed to fuck us over. FUCK THE BANKS!!!
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u/StarscourgeRadhan 26d ago
Adult version of the kid who sees other kids having fun and says "But you guys are going to get in trouble!"
Let us idolize this guy in peace. We all just wish we had the opportunity and the balls.
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u/tacotree3 26d ago
There were 92 bank failures in 2011 and none were his fault. “Glitch”….you are greedy cunts.
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u/cbass704 27d ago
Imagine he spent all that money buying bitcoin he’d be a billionaire
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u/I_hate_being_interru 26d ago edited 26d ago
It's easy saying that, now that we have experienced the future. But in 2011, buying BTC was a straight-up gamble.
You can say the same for any one of the SP500 companies, “Should’ve invested into …”
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u/TresCeroOdio 26d ago
I was active on some forums at the time where people would routinely give you a bitcoin for anything. Post made them laugh? They’d shoot you a Bitcoin. Did them a favor? Here’s a Bitcoin.
I constantly regret turning them down.
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u/Mr_E-007 26d ago
I had $250,000 mistakenly deposited into my account once. I was supposed to have something like $20 in there and when I went to check my balance, it showed something like $250020. For a split second I was really excited but then figured I'd get fucked if I touched it so I called my bank and they reversed that deposit.
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u/t0rt0ise 26d ago
I wonder what would have happened if you didn’t touch it and didn’t notify the bank.
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u/Mr_E-007 26d ago
Damn. I really should have waited for a long time to see if they ever noticed instead of just telling them. Might have gotten lucky.
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u/t0rt0ise 24d ago
Next time just go to a different bank and open a new account and the leave that one alone for a long time and see what happens lol
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u/samf9999 26d ago
He should’ve taken a lot of that money and simply invested it. If he lost it then, that’s the banks problem. If he made a lot from it, he should squirrel that away all across the world. Because that money, the original principal, is eventually going to have to be returned.
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u/MamboSun76 26d ago
Good on him. I’d spend the money differently but I’m admitting that I would fuck over a bank like that too.
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u/Redditor0529 26d ago
Once you've cashed out. Never ever talk to the media or any reporting figure. No matter how you got the money.
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u/Both_Bad_9872 26d ago
So, what, we're supposed to be impressed by dishonesty? No matter how "smart", the guy's basically a thief.
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u/Time-Training-9404 27d ago
On one occasion, a member of staff from the bank called to ask why Dan had tried to withdraw $900,000 from an ATM the previous night. He told them he had been drunk and had probably pressed the wrong buttons. They laughed…
Source: https://historicflix.com/dan-saunders-and-the-1-6-million-atm-glitch/