A teenager made money mistakenly into his account, causing him to become an overnight millionaire. Dane Gillespie, then 18, had cashed an £8,900 cheque from his grandmother into his Nationwide account. But back in 2019, the teen woke to find he was a multi millionaire - at least for a few hours before the error was corrected. The Mirror reported that his mother Caroline, from Belfast, was stunned when she was sent a screenshot of the balance. She said, 'I don't believe it.
It's as well, he told us, and didn't go and blow it all. His mum said Dane was 'gonna order a Porsche' before she warned him the money wasn't theirs and they needed to get the error corrected. The Belfast Met's millionaire bank balance only lasted a few hours before the bank, at Donegall Place, issued a correction. He added that he had thought all his birthdays came at once.
Money expert Martin Lane said the news probably isn't what account holders want to hear if they have an unexpected windfall caused by a banking error. It is plenty of ways that you can end up with an accidental windfall in your current account, whether it's a banking error, an inaccurate tax rebate, or an overpayment from your employer. If a sum of money is accidentally paid to your bank or savings account and you know it doesn't belong to you, then you must pay it back. She added that keeping any money wrongly credited to an account could lead to being charged with'retaining wrongful credit' under the Theft Act 1968. If a wrongful credit is made to your account and you know that the credit has been made wrongly and you don't take steps to cancel the credit, that accountholders could be guilty of an offence. A woman from Blackburn, Blackburn, was sentenced to 10 months in prison after she went on a spending spree after receiving £135,000 in error from Abbey bank.