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Atm error
Cptn Pants
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Alright, so this ATM by work started giving out $20 bills when you hit $10. Anyway I've used it a few times since this error started makeing sure to always get $10's so i get the $20. My Balance always goes down by $10 and I just started to get a funny feeling about it. Anyway, should i be worried in anyway? I'm just being paranoid but are the police gonna come kick in my door and haul me off for a total $40 from a broken atm?
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The only saving grace, may be their inability to find out WHEN the error started.
If it were TOTALLY untrackable - believe Id be there every day withdrawing my maximum amount.
But yea, set the cash thats extra aside for like a long while until youre SURE the error isnt going to be corrected.
Only if they could prove you were intentionally stealing their money (which you were). You thief.
What is possible is that they'll correct your balance.
Then they'll check their records because, hey, atms are also computers.
And then they'll see all the transactions you made and adjust your account accordingly OR they'll actively go after you.
You thief. You realize that you're only hurting people that need to get loans right? Now they have to pay out the ass interest rates because you stole.
They wouldn't be able to know until they counted out the till at the end of the night, and did they really give me the extra $20 or did I forget it was in my wallet?
In other words, in my case my bank would've just told me to keep it if I had gotten back in my car and drive all the way back to say "Um I think you gave me an extra $20." However, the fact that you keep doing it would raise some eyebrows, if you ask me. Is it a bank ATM or a 3rd party?
I would stop doing it if you can't afford for them to take an extra $10 or $50 or however much you've taken out of your account. The ATM keeps track of who did what transactions and technically you took $20 out. It's their right to correct your account.
ANYWAY here's my real concern, here comes the paranoia, I used the at twice in one day. So like what if they say i was trying to defraud them because i KNEW it was broken? But then can i be like "I tried to do the right thing" But then lose and go to jail?
I mean ok, so i took a total of $40 from them by using the ATM 4 times. But... ehh i got no defence do i?
A comparable scenario would be if you were to go to Walmart and buy a computer game with a stickerprice of $39.95. The register biscuit scans it's barcode without looking at the price, and it pops up as $19.99, which you then charge to your credit card. As far as the system is concerned, you have exchanged X amount of money for Y amount of product, which completes the transaction. When anyone notices, whichever chump was supposed to put a "3" instead of a "1" in that particular digit will probably get a talking to.
Unfortunately, Walmart isn't a bank, so it can't directly rape your account like the bank will.
So your "defense" is that you took it out again in the same day to see if what had happened was actually the ATM. And then other times you still needed money but it hadn't been fixed yet.
Defense is in quotes because you don't need one. They already said what they were likely to do -- take the extra money out of your account. That's pretty much the end of it.
Anyhow, I wouldn't worry about it. You called and reported it, they may ding your account, but I really doubt they're going to charge you with anything for it, and if you do, you've got a healthy mitigating factor in your favor since you called and reported it.
There's no guarantee you won't get in trouble, but at this point, there's no reason to worry about it.
They caused the problem themselves. They then fixed the machine and took money back from the affected accounts. Problem solved. To prepare the sort of information the police would require before even attempting to look at a case like this would require hours of work by a fraud investigations team, and for what? The problem is already fixed.
This is especially true when the defense of "Well, I didn't look at what came out of the machine. Why should I have to?" is pretty solid.
It just doesnt make a lot of sense to pursue you over their own mistake when they can rectify the mistake without involving cops at all.
Yeah that would work too. My suggestion was pretty much based on the assumption that they would catch it sooner or later and just deduct the money from your account. But since you reported it, i really doubt you have anything to worry about.
If the problem was that it was stocked with $20 instead of $10 in the slot for $10, they simply need to find out how many times it handed out $10 bills since that restock.
If it simply didn't even look at the other bills and was only looking at the $20 stock (and the $10 stock is untouched), then everyone who got something out with a $10 included woudl have gotten a $20.
Now if it randomly doubled people's money, that would be hard to track. I highly doubt that the ATM went rogue and decided to make random people happy, though.
jesus, do you actually think it's that serious? they're not going to charge him. if they take how much extra he had from the ATM out of his account that's as far as it would go
Both times you thought you needed only ten dollars to get yourself through the day.
Extra expenses came up.
You realised at the end of the day when you had a spare 10 dollars that something was up, so you decided to call the bank.
As long as you just didn't stand there withdrawing 10 dollars all day you should be fine.
Satans..... hints.....
Of course, that's also how I would describe charging someone with terrorism because they hung up a bunch of Lite Brites. Didn't seem to stop the city of Boston, though.
What in the shit are you talking about? If no one stole from the bank loans would be free?
"Hey Bob, check it out, some guy stole money from an ATM our bank works with."
"Well, shit, I guess I have to zip up and send that bitch a summons. Oh, and raise the interest rate a couple percent, will ya? Jesus, $40..."
PSN/XBL: dragoniemx
By accepting a $20 bill from the ATM, you are authorizing a $20 withdrawal from your account. So you may have typed 10, and the receipt may say 10, but you got $20, and you were ok with that, so therefore you made a $20 withdrawal.
Too many people get caught up in what a computer or peice of paper says and don't seem to realize that when all is said and done, reality is reality, not what the record might say. In other words, the amount you got out of the machine is not what is "wrong." You got $20, you knew it was $20, it came from identifying yourself as a particular accountholder, you spent the $20. You made a $20 withdrawal. The amount on the receipt and in the acocunting is the only thing that is "wrong." Possession is 9/10 of the law, and after the aforementioned transactions, you possessed a $20 bill. So the law sees you as making an authorized $20 transaction that was just tracked incorrectly.
There is no illegal profit, there is no fraud, there is just a technical glitch that led to a small accounting error that needs to be corrected.
Now, if you attempted to lead a conspiracy, such as telling everyone about it and trying to get a lot of people to withdraw $20s under the auspices of cheating the bank, then I guess they could try to get you on something, but in the end it is still just a matter of correcting the records.
Uh, you called the bank and alerted them to the problem, and are the one who is initiating steps to fix it. You are in the clear.
I just wanted to point out that that's not what this phrase is supposed to mean.
I agree that the bank isn't going to do anything about it, but I think repeatedly withdrawing $10 from the same ATM could be considered fraud. Again, I'm sure nothing will happen (aside from them maybe correcting the amounts), but I wouldn't consider it just an accounting glitch.
Yeah, if there's clear evidence that you were actually trying to defraud the bank out of money somehow, then yeah. Particularly if you were trying to spread the word and working this error to further benefit, or if you were spending money that you knew you didn't actually have in the account. But in his case I think that once they correct his balance then any issue of fraud or theft is pretty much done.
The deed might say you own a piece of land, but if you haven't exercised that ownership, and someone else has, the court is likely to recognize them as the owner. You might be the owner on paper, but they possess the land. And hence instead of using the paper to change reality, the court is likely to use reality to change the paper.
Same with the ATM. You may have pressed $10 and the receipt and transaction record might say $10, but what you walked away with was a real $20 bill in your possession. So if there were ever a legal dispute over the matter, in the court's eyes you made an authorized $20 withdrawal from your account that simply was not accounted correctly by the bank. The determination of criminal intent would likely proceed from that frame of reference.