The first was when I was 16, and withdrew $100 from my checking account. I dutifully handed my passbook and withdrawal slip (yes, this was awhile ago) to the teller, who just as dutifully counted out 10 bills and handed them to me.
Ten $100 bills.
"Ma'am," I said, "I think you should count these again." "Why, didn't I give you ten?" she asked. I silently handed her the bills and my passbook. She looked at the bills, and her face turned white. A $900 shortage in her cash drawer at the end of the day? She would have been fired, and possibly liable for the $900.
She was so stunned she never thanked me. No big deal.
The second time was one morning, many years later, when I stopped at an ATM (not at my bank) for cash on the way to work. It was about 8:45 a.m., 15 minutes before the bank opened. When I got my cash, some $20's were stuck together, so although I'd asked for (and was debited) $40 I received twice that.
Seeing the employees inside the locked branch, preparing for the day, I thought I'd do the right thing. I knocked on the door.
A couple of them shook their heads "no," pointing to the clock on the wall to indicate the branch wasn't open yet. I held my money up and pointed to it.
They shook their heads "no" more vigorously. I pointed to my money more vigorously. They. no doubt thinking I wanted to complain about not receiving ENOUGH money, continued to shake their heads and indicate that they had no intention of even coming to the door and talking to me, let alone letting me in.
I needed to get to work and decided I'd been as honest and helpful as I was going to be, and left. That bank is now out of business, perhaps because of the great customer service.
The third time I received money that wasn't mine, it wasn't from a bank and it wasn't money. One month when opening our brokerage statement (it was Merrill Lynch at the time), I thought we had an unusually high amount in our account. Had one of our stocks or mutual funds suddenly skyrocketed without my noticing?
I scanned the statement and discovered the culprit: there were 1,000 shares of Kansas City Power and Light (why do I remember that?) that we hadn't bought and didn't own that had mysteriously found their way into our account. According to the statement, they'd been in our account for a couple of weeks.
I called our account manager, who wasn't at all alarmed. Nor, it seemed, did he know who owned those shares, but he assured me he'd find out and our next statement would be correct. I asked him what would have happened if I hadn't called him, and he assured me, "Oh, we'd have discovered the mistake."
Maybe so.
The last time was, coincidentally, at the same ATM of the same bank where I'd tried, unsuccessfully, to return the extra $40 I'd actually received. One lunch hour I withdrew some money and was startled to see on the receipt that my checking account had a balance of just over $30,000. (Just over $300 was probably more accurate.) Wow, $30,000 in "found" money.
I rushed back to work and asked the comptroller, who was a friend of mine, what my liability would be if I withdrew that $30,000? Would I have been arrested?
"Well," he said, "if the $30,000 COULD have been in your account for real, the worst case scenario would be that you'd have to give the money back once the error was discovered."
"How would the bank know or prove that the $30,000 wasn't a legitimate number? I asked."
"They look at your average balance over the last couple of months and see if a $30,000 balance would be an assumption you could reasonably make. Do you typically have $30,000 in your checking account?"
The look on my face answered the question. His advice: "Don't withdraw the money. They'll figure it out."
And they did.
I was sorry when that bank went out of business. I had good luck at their ATMs.
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