Man Charged For Spending $80k Deposited In His Account

[jeffrey]

A La Vista man was charged with felony theft after he spent $80,000 his bank deposited by mistake in his account.

George J. Costa, 45, is charged with theft of lost or mislaid property. It is a crime to take money that's been "delivered under a mistake."

More than $106,000 was deposited into Costa's account between August 2006 and February after a Pinnacle Bank employee mixed up account numbers, according to the Nebraska State Patrol... Entire Article

[DayByDay]

I had $600+ show up in my account once that wasn't mine. I contacted the bank at least twice about it, but they said they didn't make a mistake and the money was mine. I could tell they thought I just didn't know how to keep track of my money. I didn't spend it for a long time in case they tried later to take it back out, but they never did.

[financeman45]

How did he not know someone was EFT a gift to him ! lol

[simpleyme]

according to the article finders keepers is not legal grounds for keeping the money?
LOL there goes my legal strategy for trying to keep any nice car that is parked in front of my house ;-)

[dollarsaign]

Now that was nice a mistake there.

Banks should be liable for their mistakes. But oh well. I guess he wasn't right either )

[cooliemae]

Same thing happened to my wife, though on a much smaller scale. We simply moved the money into a high yield saving account and waited for the bank to realize the mistake. We then keep the interest. Not too bad, this guy could have made a couple hundred off of interest!