Bizarre bank error makes woman a millionaire for 10 minutes
A Boston woman became a millionaire for ten minutes, after her bank transferred the massive sum in a case of mistaken identity.
Around 1:50 pm on Wednesday, Ellen Fleming, 26, received a voicemail from a financial consultant TD Ameritrade saying that a deposit had been made to her account.
She had opened a TD Ameritrade account a few months earlier, and had only added about $50.
Confused by the voice message, she checked the bank’s app and saw that her balance had sky rocketed to an incredible $1,101,740.75 ($AUD 1,482,993.36).
“A bank account that I had $50 in had over $1 million dollars deposited into it. A banker made a HUGE mistake and confused me with another Ellen Fleming,” Ms Fleming tweeted.
“I was rich for 10 mins & I can tell you, life was in fact better. I’m now humbled from loosing [sic] all my money,” she said.
While she enjoyed her incredible wealth for a few minutes, she eventually alerted the bank to the error after chatting with her mother.
A bank employee clarified that the amount was meant to go to another Ellen Fleming, who lived in Florida but an error had occurred along the way.
“You need to take every opportunity that’s handed to you,” she said. “But that seemed like an opportunity that could lead me to federal prison, so it didn’t seem worth it,” she told local news outlet The Boston Globe.
On Thursday, a spokeswoman for TD Ameritrade confirmed that an “errant deposit temporarily inflated the balance of Ms. Fleming’s account” but was corrected after Ms Fleming called in, according to local news outlet, The Boston Globe. The account now contains $63.
“If rich Ellen Fleming wants to send a few bucks my way for my honesty, my venmo is open,” Ms Fleming tweeted.
