What would you do, indeed?!
Matt Levine has a story in today's Money Stuff about banks messing up payments and sending the wrong about to the wrong people—Citibank in particular has gotten in trouble over this in recent years.
Now, the news included a school system in Maryland accidentally paying a substitute teacher $7 million... fat-finger error, paying the teacher for 73,000 work days instead of 3 (I, suppose, at $73k...?). Ooops.
Presumably nothing particularly interesting happened at the school’s administrative offices for most of that time — they didn’t know they had overpaid — though surely the discovery of the problem was exciting.
But the teacher! Imagine getting $7 million for three days of substitute teaching! Like you have the immediate question of “do I call someone or …,” but this person apparently answered that one in the negative. And then you have the second question of “do I move this into Bitcoin and flee the country,” but again no. Between those two extremes you get pretty much “well I will buy myself a nice dinner and wait to see what happens.”
So... you wait, for almost two months, and do nothing...
For ~85 BTC, I definitely pack my bags and "flee the country" LOL.For ~85 BTC, I definitely pack my bags and "flee the country" LOL.
Also, 50 days is such an odd amount of time to wait... maybe you wait a few days and then reach out to your boss.... anything more and it's JUST FREAKING WEIRD.
And the substitute teacher's bank did nothing? All of a sudden 7 mil, POOF, into an account that doesn't regularly deal in those figures haha.
Nah, I would get caught/flagged by dumping WAY TOO MUCH into WAY TOO MANY exchanges WAY TOO EARLY, plus making massive cash withdrawals plus booking flights to some non-extradiction country asap.
(being a not-very-sophisticated criminal, I presume this strategy would get me caught very fast, yes?)
nonpaywalled here: https://newsletterhunt.com/emails/180207
Not a 'professional,' but maybe this cpuld work?
Withdraw the daily cash limit from the bank atm and buy Bitcoin at a no-kyc bitcoin ATM (carefully) .
Do this until they notice and then claim you lost it all gambling. Possibly you could research one of those janky indigenous casinos and say you lost it all there (assuming their security protocol is a bit more lax - which maybe it's not I have no idea.)
Still, even if it works... It'd take a long time to get all the 7 mil
Yeah, time is the problem with the daily limits.
There might be no better way than just going in and making a wire transfer to an offshore account. Obviously, that will involve someone at the bank, but maybe they don't go any further than verifying the balance (the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing).
Perhaps, but then don't you risk losing it all? (Slow and steady wins the race)
Slow and steady might lose you everything, too. They'll just put a lien on your future earnings until you pay it back.
I also wouldn't assume that I'd get very many days before the mistake was caught and a few days worth of maximum withdrawals wouldn't be sufficiently life changing to justify the risk.
'They' being the bank or school board?
In any case, I would think they need a court order to do so.
And would it be with interest?
I'm sure $7 million fraud (or whatever they charge you with) will be a more severe punishment than whatever you manage to buy with the cash.
A lien would definitely require a legal judgement, but that would come pretty automatically when you failed to pay back the money that wasn't yours.
You'd possibly also owe income taxes on the amount you didn't pay back. It would be a real mess.
If you couldn't get a lot of it out at once and get out of extradition range, I don't think it would be worth trying anything.
You're probably right.
On the other hand. I'd be willing to bet there is probably a certain high level of clearance the bank employee needs to have when wiring such large amounts. And I pretty sure wires take a good amount of time, which probably means they do some checks and balances.
This is why my approach would be to put what you can in bitcoin when you can, while trying to not trigger any alarm bells.
Then be ready to plead to the courts that you have a gambling problem and pray for a favorable sentence.
precisely this. Gotta go BIG or go honest
Besides, didn't it turn out to be 50 days?
If you had played these odds with 1500 daily cash limit you could have had almost 1 whole bitcoin.
Not big enough for you?
Yes, it did turn out to be 50 days, but would you expect to have that long?
If so, your strategy might be fine.
...didn't set off any flags receiving 7 mil, maybe won't set off any flags sending them out
Good point, but wire transfers exist for some reason, so it must not be easy to transfer sufficiently large amounts out of a bank for normal people.
Currently, my daily dca would not even be close to my daily cash limit. I'd take any extra sats I can get - anyway, you probably wouldn't hit 7mil before either the bank or the school board clues in.
I'd be surprised if there were any way to get away with the whole pot.
I remember I read somewhere about the similar incident where they just transferred in Trillions.
Found it https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/01/citigroup-mistakenly-credited-a-customer-account-with-81-trillion.html
yup... City has had REPEATED problems with this sort of error lol
But the funds somehow never reached or stayed in the customers' accounts!
I'd love to hear a more savvy person lay out the "right" way to deal with this situation.
I'm sure I would assume that someone would catch the mistake very quickly. Probably as bold as I would get is paying off the mortgage. If the bank unwinds that, then I'm just back where I started.
If it went on for a few days, I might get a little bolder, but I don't know how much I could get the wife on board with. "How to get your wife on board" would be an entire separate topic.
Hahah, shit man I dunno.
Maybe this is the sort of thing one ought to have a solid plan for in advance? Not just make it up if/when it happens
Once my bank transfered a loan for my dad to my account. It was only around 30k, but I was like 16 at that time, so this was an enourmous amount. Obviously they noticed the mistake after a day or so.
Haha yeah exactly.
Give it back. Be moral and ethical