South African Worker Gets Half A Million In Error, Refuses To Give It Back
A worker in South Africa must have thought he was playing Monopoly when he received a bank error in his favor in the princely sum of R500,000 ($42,711). Now he is definitely not playing the game and is flat-out refusing to give the money back to his employer.
If you always thought that punctuation was a minor thing and not all that important, think again. It was a punctuation error that caused the whole problem in the first place.
Oh dear: Typing mistake gives worker R500 000 – Business News | IOL Business http://t.co/euQajtuBaI
— Chesham eDocuments (@TypingCentre) February 16, 2015
Apparently Michael Mochudi, managing director of Motsi Civils and Plant Hire in Welkom, Free State, meant to pay his worker Phemelo Mothupi the sum of R5687,61. However, when typing in the amount to transfer the money to Mothupi’s Capitec bank account, Mochudi accidentally forgot to type a comma in the strategic position. This meant that, in reality, he actually transferred a whole R568761 ($48,577) to Mothupi.
Times Live notes that apparently Mochudi realized almost immediately what he had done and asked his employee to return the money, but Mothupi refuses to do so. Mochudi then issued a court application to try and get his money back.
Typing mistake gives worker R500 000 http://t.co/1cpATLEcy5
— Business Report (@busrep) February 10, 2015
Mochudi contacted his own bank, FNB, who got him to fill in forms, telling him it will take five days to reverse the transaction. In the meanwhile, his intrepid worker has already transferred R400,000 ($34,167) to his wife Phumela’s Capitec bank account and she has cleverly tied up R260,000 ($22,208) of the balance received in an investment account.
Now IOL reports an urgent court application has been issued to freeze both the Mothupi bank accounts and apparently the court will decide on March 5 whether or not the couple should have to refund the money to Mochudi.
Mochudi is now most probably hoping the South African couple get a “Go to Jail” card this time around.
In other odd news, the Inquisitr reports today on a strange new U.K. trend, whereby a group of people in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland is apparently knitting and distributing wool boobs.
In line with it being a rather “Wacky Wednesday,” there is also the tale of Krispy Kreme’s Hull, U.K. outlet offering a controversially named event called “KKK Wednesday.” When the error of their ways was pointed out, they apologized.
[Image: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Jenn Vargas]
