this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2025
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Weird News - Things that make you go 'hmmm'

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Bank error in your favor, collect several trillion dollars

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[–] adarza@lemmy.ca 56 points 1 month ago (1 children)

doge treasury dept intern: "whoops, that was supposed to go to the president's.. i mean, elon's, personal account. my bad."

[–] GuyFawkes@midwest.social 15 points 1 month ago

You mean President Elon’s

[–] theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world 46 points 1 month ago (2 children)
[–] metaStatic@kbin.earth 19 points 1 month ago (1 children)

this is how we end up with sov cits.

Everything is fake. But if men with guns say it's real then treating it as such is a matter of survival.

[–] theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago

Aren't sovcits like the polar opposite view and believe that the "system" is so real and literal that they can recite magic contract language to get free money and have laws no longer apply to them?

[–] nokturne213@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 month ago

It sure buys real things.

[–] jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 36 points 1 month ago (2 children)

you'd think anything over a few million would be flagged for manual review. such a basic systems check.

[–] Album@lemmy.ca 18 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It probably was and still accidentally approved. It happens. I see four eyes or maker checker processes fail all the time.

[–] jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

No process is perfect, doesnt mean you dont put it in place in these context. The cost is trivially low given the volume and doesnt make you look like a moron.

[–] Album@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That's my point. It's in place and probably still failed. It happens.

[–] jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

yes and my point was the automated flagged probably wasnt in place ;). That or the UI fucked up and truncated the value in a manner that lead to it looking much smaller =p

[–] Album@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 month ago

Yeah I've seen both of those as well

[–] Raiderkev@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

Sounds like a bunch of commie talk. Let the free market decide where the money goes

[–] adarza@lemmy.ca 27 points 1 month ago

you can have that money back, just lemme have the interest earned over those few hours.

[–] JeSuisUnHombre@lemm.ee 18 points 1 month ago (1 children)

But hey that still counts as $162 trillion added to the gdp

[–] Album@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That's not how GDP is calculated, a better joke would be "... Added to M1"

[–] Linktank@lemmy.today 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeah everyone knows what M1 is. Duh.

[–] Album@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeah everyone thinks they know what GDP is too

[–] Fleur_@hilariouschaos.com 1 points 1 month ago

You're both hilarious and made reallyyyy funny jokes 🙄

[–] londos@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

Regardless of how/when this gets reversed, this person should get a Wikipedia page and forever be referred to as the first (and hopefully only) trillionaire. It'll drive Musk crazy.

[–] Sphks@jlai.lu 4 points 1 month ago

How can we know for sure that it is an error ?

[–] nucleative@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Just a number in a database...

If the customer acted really fast he might have been able to yoink some of that out of there in the form of a wire to another bank.

[–] ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 8 points 1 month ago

Wouldn't work, banks would almost certainly flag and hold the transaction for possible fraud, and banks can also just reverse transactions like that (usually for a fee paid to the original receiving bank). Even serial numbers of bills can be marked as fraudulent so even withdrawing from an ATM wouldn't work.

Banks aren't on a blockchain, they have protocols and agreements to be able to fix mistakes like this.

Best shot is immediately contacting the bank, highlighting the error and hope they're nice enough to leave a little bit as a finder's fee.

[–] not_IO@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 month ago

is that the richest person to ever roam the planet in history now?

[–] AnAustralianPhotographer@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Any chance the customers name was 'Wesley Gibson'?