Woman Loses $41K After Banking Error, Realizes Mistake Two Years Later

A British woman loses $41,000 after making a banking error that transferred her money to the wrong account. To make matters worse, she didn’t catch the mistake until two years later.

The woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, is being referred to by the pseudonym “Sally Donaldson” as she makes her story public.

Donaldson was using an online banking system to transfer funds when she accidentally mistyped a single digit in the account number sequence. The error caused her money to be deposited into a stranger’s account.

An article by Newser writes that Donaldson intended to send her monthly pay of about $1,500 to a joint account she shares with her husband. The amount had accumulated to an astonishing $42,000 before Donaldson, a hairdresser by trade, noticed her blunder.

In October of 2012, Donaldson became aware of the error and contacted Nationwide Bank. Unfortunately, she and her husband have only been able to recover roughly $1,000 of the missing funds so far.

According to The Guardian, the remaining $41,000 may never be returned. Nationwide claims the money was withdrawn from the bank account that received the deposits and may never be re-payed. In a statement from Nationwide, a spokesperson for the banking institute explained:

“By law, a person is not entitled to rely on another’s mistake to keep money to which they were not entitled. The final payment transferred was recovered, but previous payments were no longer in the account. The recipient has been contacted and we have established she doesn’t have the funds to repay. Unfortunately, there is no trail. The receiving customer simply made regular cash withdrawals rather than transferring monies to another account.”

Do you think the woman’s simple banking error should cause her to lose $41,000 of her hard-earned wages?