Chase Bank "accidentally" deposits US $50 billion into personal checking account

This should be categorized as "news that I wish had happened to me."

I think most people can related to how much of a pain in the ass dealing with a bank can be. For me personally, I am regularly locked out of my accounts or have to provide a one time password to access it only to discover that the phone number they have for me on file is the one I provided when I set up the account 20 years ago, before text messaging existed. Or because I am too far away from where the bank determines I live I can't use my credit card because it is determined to be fraud. Their security is through the roof and is more of an annoyance than a deterrent. However, their security that prevents me from paying for some Arby's because I am 200 miles from my house doesn't seem to prevent them from depositing many thousands of times of what I will make in my entire lifetime into someone's personal checking account apparently.

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The couple who was the recipient of this amazing deposit reside in Louisiana and they did the "right" thing by pointing it out to Chase Bank, who of course immediately reversed the deposit and again, I want to highlight that had the situation been in reverse for a MUCH smaller amount it would have taken a long time if you could get it done at all. I have at times in the past sent money to the wrong account number and had to fill out loads of paperwork, make tons of phone calls, get treated like a child by people who are probably younger than me, and then warned about how this is a "one time courtesy" or something along those lines but when the bank does it, they handle it right away with no paperwork and no reward for the family that caught it.

I would think that when you voluntarily return enough money to buy a skyscraper, you should get at least a couple hundred thousand dollar reward.

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In another story, a college student had nearly the same amount of money removed from her account and obviously she didn't actually have $50B in her account so it simply showed a negative balance of near 50 billion. Chase corrected this as well but now it appears as though this botched transaction has negatively affected the girl's credit rating.

_{This girl didn't hide her identity on Twitter so neither will I}

The above poster hilariously posted that the error only lasted 2 days but she did the math and Chase owes her $173,000 in interest for the time that the money was in her account.

Chase said the error was a "computer glitch" and computer experts immediately chimed in to say that this is almost impossible since the mathematical capabilities of all computers are all in base-2 and have rounding errors by design and are incapable of making a "glitch" that would result in a perfectly round number like this.

Chase has some explaining to do because there is also some speculation that they did this on purpose in order to change their balance sheet for a few days for taxation purposes.

I have no love for banks - I think they are evil - so I sincerely hope that they get into some serious trouble with this perhaps with a class-action lawsuit. I wouldn't hold my breath on that one though since because they are banks and government loves banks, they will probably not face any sort of penalty over this.