British bank Nationwide accidentally made one of its customers an overnight multimillionaire after abruptly adding about $10.9 million into his account.
Dane Gillespie from Belfast, Ireland, says he cashed a birthday check worth about $10,900 into his Nationwide account – and was shocked to see a massive pile of cash enter his account.
The bank, which manages over $333 billion in assets, added three zeroes to Gillespie’s deposit due to an apparent glitch.
the teen’s mother,
I said to him this morning, ‘that cheque should be cleared in your savings’ and he went, ‘right’. Next minute my husband messaged me with the photograph of his bank account details. It took me a wee while to click.
He’s going to me, ‘I’m gonna order a Porsche’ and I said, ‘don’t be daft, that’s not our money, we need to get this sorted’.”
Despite Dane’s desire to spend the cash, the family waited it out and the bank brought the teenager’s balance back to normal in a matter of hours.
A different kind of “free money” glitch happened in Ireland last month.
A software bug at the billion-dollar Bank of Ireland went viral on the social media platform X, allowing customers to withdraw cash that wasn’t theirs.
The bug made it possible for people to send about $1,000 – even if they had insufficient funds – to digital banking apps like Revolut.
