2
0

A Sudden Windfall Lands A Louisiana Woman In Jail


 invite response                
2021 Apr 14, 5:08am   779 views  28 comments

by ohomen171   ➕follow (2)   💰tip   ignore  

#charlesschwabripoff An article caught my attention and got me laughing. A woman in the suburbs of New Orleans went online to check her Charles Schwab stock brokerage account. She found that it had magically grown by over $1,200,000 US. She went out on a fast and a wild spending spree. She bought a new house, a new car, etc.

Charles Schwab caught up to her. They told her that they had deposited the large sum into her account by error. They demanded the return of the money. She could not return it all. The Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Department has changed her with bank fraud and grand theft.

In the US legal system such an erroneous deposit of funds to an account is deemed to be a criminal offense. After all, you knew that the money was not yours. In a country with a British Common Law legal system views such matters differently. Such an error is deemed to be negligence on the part of the financial institution. A civil suit is filed to recover the funds.

This story takes me back to January of 1988. I was living in L.A. at the time. I was drowsy when I awakened one morning. I opened my mail from the previous day. One letter was from my money market fund Capital Preservation Fund. I looked at my statement. I normally kept $1,000 US in the account. I was shocked to see a balance of $310,000 US. I asked my domestic partner Antonieta to confirm this balance. She confirmed it.

At that time, I was working as a paralegal at a personal injury law firm. When I arrived at work, I went right into the senior partner's office. I showed him the statement. He laughed long and hard. When he regained his composure, he gave me the following advice:

"Jack, if you take any of this money, you will go to jail. On the other hand, any interest earned while the money sits in the account is yours."

It took several months for the financial institution to discover the error and remove the funds. I made a tidy amount of money off the interest. The financial institution praised my honesty. The grandson of the founder became a friend of mine.

Comments 1 - 28 of 28        Search these comments

1   WookieMan   2021 Apr 14, 5:18am  

While I know this happens occasionally. Shouldn't it be the banks responsibility to have insurance for this type of error? If the money is in your account, it's your account. I'm sure there's legal precedent I don't know about, but just seems odd that it's a crime to spend money in your account.

If I've written someone a check, it's not impossible for them to wire me money without me knowing. They have the account and routing number to my banking institution.
2   RC2006   2021 Apr 14, 5:47am  

WookieMan says
While I know this happens occasionally. Shouldn't it be the banks responsibility to have insurance for this type of error? If the money is in your account, it's your account. I'm sure there's legal precedent I don't know about, but just seems odd that it's a crime to spend money in your account.

If I've written someone a check, it's not impossible for them to wire me money without me knowing. They have the account and routing number to my banking institution.


That would all be logical, except the laws are written in favor of the rich i.e. the bank.
3   mell   2021 Apr 14, 6:30am  

RC2006 says
WookieMan says
While I know this happens occasionally. Shouldn't it be the banks responsibility to have insurance for this type of error? If the money is in your account, it's your account. I'm sure there's legal precedent I don't know about, but just seems odd that it's a crime to spend money in your account.

If I've written someone a check, it's not impossible for them to wire me money without me knowing. They have the account and routing number to my banking institution.


That would all be logical, except the laws are written in favor of the rich i.e. the bank.


If you write somebody a check clearly in error say for $10000 and it says electrical work and you have a bill for it for $1000 so you can prove it was erroneous the other person will have to return you the money as well. Of course it's much harder for you to recover it than for a big bank but it's clear the woman can't keep the money. The law is just imo, just the banks have all the levers, lawyers and Leo at their disposal. Also if you spend that money in good faith you have quite some time to pay it back. She moved it across accounts to hide it immediately though and started spending on big items from there. Your employer has the same right to recover money from you, that's why some don't do direct deposit as they can use the same channel to charge it back. If you take checks only it's much harder for them to recoup money, esp. if you spent it quickly.
4   Tenpoundbass   2021 Apr 14, 6:41am  

You get to keep windfalls. Changing the definition of theft is not a valid defense.
5   Tenpoundbass   2021 Apr 14, 6:45am  

ohomen171 says
I asked my domestic partner


Is that what you called your live in girlfriend in 1988?
6   HeadSet   2021 Apr 14, 7:10am  

mell says
If you write somebody a check clearly in error say for $10000 and it says electrical work and you have a bill for it for $1000 so you can prove it was erroneous the other person will have to return you the money as well.

And if that person just kept your money it would be opportunistic theft.
7   WookieMan   2021 Apr 14, 7:26am  

HeadSet says
mell says
If you write somebody a check clearly in error say for $10000 and it says electrical work and you have a bill for it for $1000 so you can prove it was erroneous the other person will have to return you the money as well.

And if that person just kept your money it would be opportunistic theft.

I'm not saying it was morally or ethically correct for the woman to take it. I just assumed they'd have insurance for those types of errors. The woman obviously took advantage of the situation.

I don't have $1M in my account, but I have enough in my checking to not care and just check the statement for fraud maybe monthly. I could accidentally spend it no problem if there was an error deposit. We also have a savings app that texts us daily so I guess I would notice the increase. I personally wouldn't spend it if I knew it wasn't my money. Just stating it's not impossible to have random or family wire you money and not know where it came from if they were intending it to be a surprise.
8   RWSGFY   2021 Apr 14, 7:41am  

Tenpoundbass says
ohomen171 says
I asked my domestic partner


Is that what you called your live in girlfriend in 1988?


Did you just assume xer pardner's gender?
9   HeadSet   2021 Apr 14, 7:51am  

FuckCCP89 says
Did you just assume xer pardner's gender?

"Assuming gender" accusations are so passe. The new trend is "Did you assume my partners species.
10   Ceffer   2021 Apr 14, 10:23am  

Repossessing from hookers and blow has become a fine art.
11   Ceffer   2021 Apr 14, 11:04am  

Does this mean Elena is a grifter?
12   RWSGFY   2021 Apr 14, 11:56am  

HunterTits says
Ceffer says
Does this mean Elena is a grifter?


Who DA FUCK is 'Elena'?


Nobody knows.
13   RC2006   2021 Apr 14, 11:56am  

HunterTits says
Ceffer says
Does this mean Elena is a grifter?


Who DA FUCK is 'Elena'?


His trans real doll.
14   RC2006   2021 Apr 14, 2:00pm  

HunterTits says
RC2006 says
His trans real doll.


WHOSE trans real doll?


Elena

Not Rin his real dolls are straight.
15   Ceffer   2021 Apr 14, 2:21pm  

Apparently his spouse. He gazes deep into her eyes, communes with her about her current wistful obsessions and flights of emotional fancy, pens an OP for Patnet, then flees the scene like a bandit.
16   mell   2021 Apr 14, 4:06pm  

If you find a million dollars the money isn't automatically yours because it's a redefined windfall. Maybe they should though enact a certain percentage the bank can't reclaim in such a case, similar to a finders fee. Would be 50k for 1MM not too bad.
17   Misc   2021 Apr 14, 10:04pm  

I dunno. Recent happenings in this area have led to weirder results.

Citibank made a $900 million error, and a judge ruled the defendants didn't have to give the money back.

With this as recent precedent, anything could happen. Especially with a woke jury/judge.

https://www.cnbctv18.com/business/citibanks-900-million-mistake-how-the-biggest-banking-blunder-unfolded-8353631.htm

She could now turn around and sue them for false arrest.
18   Patrick   2021 Apr 14, 10:12pm  

Lol!

I have to assume that with a $900M mistake, someone on the inside helped the mistake along.

Looks like Revlon has over $3B in debt and the $900M is not yet on their balance sheet:

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/REV/balance-sheet?p=REV

Looks like kind of a corpse of a company.

Does not seem to have affected Citi stock (C) or REV stock.
19   SunnyvaleCA   2021 Apr 14, 10:30pm  

mell says
If you write somebody a check clearly in error say for $10000 and it says electrical work
I suppose you haven't tried to get price quotes for redoing all the electrical in a shack like mine in silicon valley. Bill will be closer to $10k than to $1k.
20   SunnyvaleCA   2021 Apr 14, 10:48pm  

I had a similar thing happen about 20 years ago. I got mixed up with someone else at an investement/stock broker.

It all started when I suddenly got a statement from a stock broker that took public one of the startups I worked for a few years back. The account had been completely empty for a while since I had moved on. Anyway, the statement noted that I had about $5MM in stock for a company that had IPOed a few months before. I waited a week to see if someone would call me or something. Nope! So I called the broker... "can you confirm this $5MM stock." After a while the answer was: "Yes, and I also confirm an additional $7MM shares and $50k in your account as well." Oh yay!

It was getting pretty close to the end of the year and I suddenly figured out that I didn't want to pay income tax on the interest on that $50k and then have to re-file a correction later. So I called and explained that the stock and money were deposited to the wrong account. Fortunately, I didn't get any spurious tax documents that year. What a hassle that would be!

Then, the following February, I opened my condo door to an overnight FedEx envelope just sitting out there for anyone to steal. What could this be? $27MM in stock certificates! For that same company. Listed on the certificates was precisely my name and my address. However, on the back of the certificates was a "red line" indicating restrictions on sale (180 day holding period). Ah... I figured out what to do. Look up that company and search for my name. Sure enough, one of the founders — and a 10% owner in the IPO company — had identical first and last name; we differed on middle initial where he was a "J" and I'm a "K." That company went through the same broker that I had an account with from years before.

So I waited another month to just see what would happen. Eventually I called the broker and told them of the specific name difference. They wanted me to FedEx — at their expense — the certificates back. We settled on just dropping it in first class mail at my (39¢) expense and calling it good.

Later I figured out that if I had tried to keep that $27MM in certificates. This guy might not have noticed! At the time he had more than $100MM in that company. (All of which are worth precisely $0 today!)
21   SunnyvaleCA   2021 Apr 14, 10:58pm  

So... the legal advise I got (from an actual lawyer friend) is that if you can't in good faith claim you thought that money (or stock or anything else of value) was legally yours, you must return it.

For the person in the narrative of the original post, I'd suggest just collecting interest. After a year or two of document attempts to return the money, maybe put it in a CD and try to make $3k yearly on the interest.
22   theoakman   2021 Apr 15, 5:16am  

When I bought my home in 2011, I put 40% down (140k). The morons at Chase somehow turned my downpaymennt into a deposit and there was 280k in my account after closing. I went to them and notified them. The teller was like "how can you not be freaking out?". I had all the money and the deed to the home, I was good. Well, after my notification, the moron on the phone "fixed it" by depositing another 140k into my account. So now, I had $420k in the account.

Knowing the law, I just said to my wife, let's just ignore it and see if it sits there forever. It sat there for about 8 months before they figured it out.
23   mell   2021 Apr 15, 8:11am  

SunnyvaleCA says
mell says
If you write somebody a check clearly in error say for $10000 and it says electrical work
I suppose you haven't tried to get price quotes for redoing all the electrical in a shack like mine in silicon valley. Bill will be closer to $10k than to $1k.


Haha I'm a new CA house owner so I will find out soon - thx for the heads up ;)
24   NDrLoR   2021 Apr 15, 8:54am  

SunnyvaleCA says
had identical first and last name;
One of the early People's Courts when Judge Joseph Wopner was presiding was exactly like that. An heir received an estate distribution for $900 after everything was settled, but the check was placed in an account with the exact names, but the wrong person. When the correct beneficiary contacted the wrong person after somehow finding out, they didn't want to give up the money. He finally took the wrong recipient to court who still firmly argued that he should be able to keep the money. The judge asked him if he was an heir of such and such, which of course he wasn't. He responded that he offered to return half of the money, but the judge explained that he wasn't entitled to any of it. It's the law that if a wrong deposit is placed in your account, it's still not yours and judgment was made in favor of the plaintiff. The Bible, from which our laws evolved, explains the reason for laws in 1 Timothy 1:9:

"Knowing and understanding this: that the Law is not enacted for the righteous (the upright and just, who are in right standing with God), but for the lawless and unruly, for the ungodly and sinful, for the irreverent and profane, for those who strike and beat and [even] murder fathers and strike and beat and [even] murder mothers, for manslayers,"
26   Patrick   2021 Apr 15, 9:45am  

article from 2 days ago about it:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/schwab-sues-former-client-accidental-232946189.html

NEW YORK, April 13 (Reuters) - Charles Schwab Corp is suing one of its former customers after the retail brokerage allegedly sent more than $1.2 million to an account of the Louisiana woman and then could not get the money back.

Schwab meant to send $82.56 to Kelyn Spadoni's Fidelity Brokerage Services account in February, but a computer glitch caused it to erroneously transfer more than $1.2 million, according to the lawsuit.

Schwab tried to get the money back, but repeated calls and texts to Spadoni, who lives in a suburb of New Orleans, were not returned, the brokerage said in the lawsuit.
27   RWSGFY   2021 Apr 15, 10:21am  

Patrick says
Schwab meant to send $82.56 to Kelyn Spadoni's Fidelity Brokerage Services account in February, but a computer glitch caused it to erroneously transfer more than $1.2 million, according to the lawsuit.


Hey, Schwab, learn to code!
28   WookieMan   2021 Apr 15, 10:38am  

FuckCCP89 says
Hey, Schwab, learn to code!

That or get/have insurance for this type of thing. If I accidentally shoot myself, I'm not able to sue Winchester for damages if I blow my foot off.

Please register to comment:

api   best comments   contact   latest images   memes   one year ago   random   suggestions