Woman unexpectedly receives $50,000 from her bank. Then, she found a way to hold onto it legally

Through luck, quick thinking, and due dilligence, the woman claimed she got to keep the money.

UPDATED OCT 22, 2024

Representative image of a young woman withdrawing money at the ATM machine. Cover Image Source: Getty Images | Photo by Urbazon

A woman accidentally received nearly $50,000 in her account from her bank and got to keep it. While the transfer was clearly a mistake, she claims that she got to legally spend it. Aprille (@epicaprille on TikTok) shared the story on social media and explained the details in full to her viewers.

Screenshot from the videos | TikTok | @epicaprille — Screenshot of Aprille narrating her experience. | (Image source: TikTok | @epicaprille)

Here's how the lucky woman got to keep the $50k

In the first part of her story, Aprille shared that the incident happened about 17 years ago when she was in her 20s. She then skipped to the good part and said she didn't go to jail and she didn't do anything wrong by keeping the money.

She said she was going through the mail when she found the "wire confirmation" that said "$49,700" was wired to her bank account. She was supposed to receive money from her credit union but it wasn't nearly as much as she got.

The creator said that at first, she thought some gambling friend or a family member must have sent her the money. She also thought some shady manager she worked for could be hiding his money by diverting it to her account. So she called everyone to confirm and none of the people she knew had sent her the money.

Screenshots from the video | TikTok | @epicaprille — Screenshots from the video posted by Aprille | (Image source: TikTok | @epicaprille)

"So then I immediately… okay, I called the credit union," she said. However, the bank denied that any mistake was made and they confirmed that the money was rightfully sent to her account. "So the credit union wired the money to the other bank but it was a mistake. But they were insisting that there was no mistake," she said.

So the creator got in touch with a lawyer to straighten things out and stay out of trouble. The lawyer told her to report the transaction again and document everything. He said not to touch the money for 30 days and instructed her to post her story on a public platform so that if the person who is missing the money sees her post, could claim it.

In the follow-up, she shared that even the second time, the bank denied making any mistake but this time she had it on record. She said the bank failed to follow its protocol and the money remained unclaimed for 30 days.

In the third part, the creator said that she got a call from a lawyer who asked her to return the money to the bank. However, she informed the lawyer that she had reported it to the bank and it was way past 30 days, so she was well within her rights to keep the money.

"The lawyer said he was a friend of the bank," she said in the video. Thus she deduced that it was a favor call and they hadn't informed the police as they didn't want it to become a civil matter.

@epicaprille Replying to @Plant Base Rea ♬ original sound - Aprille | Manifestation Bestie

In the video about spending the $50,000, Aprille shared that she bought a house with the money along with a second house that she and her boyfriend flipped for $22,000. She said she also bought a car and practically lived off the money for some time.

While her case seems rare, her comment section indicated that it was a rather common thing to happen, although for not such a big sum. "I called a bank to report fraud by my husband and they wouldn’t even take the complaint. Now they’re out $1000+," commented user @notme222220, in one of her videos.