wmlro.com: it's not true. If a bank puts millions in your account, you can't keep it.
Long ago, there was a principle that if your bank account was credited with a sum by accident and you spent it, you didn't have to refund it. Then that was changed: if you spent it because you realised it wasn't yours and intended to rely on the safe harbour provision, that was fraud. Then it was changed again....
Now, if the amount of money put into your bank account is so disproportionate to any sum you might reasonably expect, then you will be presumed to have known it was not your money.
And so, when the operators of a BP petrol station in Rotorua in New Zealand applied for an overdraft, they expected to be allowed to spend up to NZD of Westpac's money.
What they did not expect was that Westpack would put NZD10 million into their account.
And nor, to be fair, did Westpac.
But by the time the bank realised their error the money was gone and so were the people from the filling station. And although it seems to be communal knowledge that the sum involved was the nice round figure of 10,000,000 Kiwi Dollars, the bank is, so far, not specifying the amount. But the bank is saying that the money is "stolen" and that it is using both criminal and civil procedures to try to get it back.
The police are chasing the money: they say it has gone "overseas."
Leo Gao has been named as the man - but his New Zealand girlfriend's name is noticeably absent from all the reports. That's because to identify her would identify her daughter who, judging by the school she attends, under 10 years old and must be protected.However, 3News on TV has named her as Cara Yang. Gao's mother and brother have gone, too.
If they left NZ by air, then their first steps are easily tracked: New Zealand was one of the earliest countries to fall in line with the USA's demand for all passenger data to be collected and made available before the plane took off. Although the data is not released to all foreign governments, all airlines collect and retain it as a matter of course.
Of far more interest is just how anyone who just happened to find such a large amount in their bank account could put in place the infrastructure to move the money without it being picked up by bank monitoring at one or other end of the first transaction.
Westpac are going to have some tough questions to answer if regulators bother to ask them.
Download PDF version of this page