Man Goes To Jail For Getting Free Money : What Would You Have Done?

[ihavenobias]

Run time: 01:59 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhpT_njVq_E   Posted on YouTube: February 26, 2008 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: February 27, 2008 By DU Member: ihavenobias Views on DU: 1145

 
I have some thoughts on this. First off, I want to point out that they discussed this in more detail on the show and this excerpt (while entertaining) only touches on some of the lighter aspects of the story.

Also, my guess is that most people will climb up on their high horse and say how they would never even imagine spending a dollar of that money because it would be wrong (keep in mind of course that no *individual* will actually lose 2 million dollars because of this)

Fair enough, but IMO, a good number of people that will *claim* that would likely have a very different answer *if* they knew they would never get caught. It's EASY to say you wouldn't spend the money if deep down (or on the surface) you were terrified of getting in trouble for it.

This reminds me of Mark Twain's short story, The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_That_Corrupted_Hadleyburg

If you haven't read it (I love Mark Twain...also, you can read this story free online), I highly recommend it, *especially* if your answer to this question is flatly 'No(!), I would NEVER even consider taking a dollar of the money'.

PS---You can always watch the Show Live 3-5 pm ET, with a Rolling Post Game 5-7 pm daily Monday-Friday at www.theyoungturks.com The RPG often contains political talk but also many non-political topics to lighten things up (and yes, that audio may not necessarily be work-safe).

Also, if you can't watch live, the 3-5pm portion of the show (politics) streams the rest of the day, all day right after the Post Game Show ends leading up to the initial show at 3pm.

[sandnsea]

1. It's obviously a mistake

I've had it happen. No. You do not spend the money. Unless you want to take it and go to a country that doesn't extradict. I might consider that if it were millions.

[ihavenobias]

3. Should the guy go to jail? BTW, it was $2 million dollars (not sure how much of that he spent) n/t

[MindMatter]

12. If they had mistakenly LOST all the money in his account,

would he be OK with that? You know, it was an honest mistake.

Regarding fleeing to a foreign country, I'd just point out that 2 million bucks doesn't go as far as it used to. If we're talking 100 million, now I have to think about that. But seriously what country that has no respect for banking laws would you want to spend the rest of your life in, knowing that if you crossed the border, you could spend the rest of your life in prison?

[ihavenobias]

13. The money is insured

so if they "lost" the money it wouldn't really be lost. In that respect he would not be directly effected in any major way.

[MindMatter]

21. Only $100,000

[ihavenobias]

23. I've never heard that before n/t

[sandnsea]

25. That's FDIC insurance

Banks undoubtedly have separate insurance to cover thefts and errors.

[sandnsea]

15. A bank has lost my money

No I was not ok with it. I'm sure whoever lost $2 million wouldn't be okay with it either. And $2 million is a hell of a lot of money, anywhere in the world. It would provide me $75,000 - $100,000 a year to live on, if I didn't do a thing with it except put it in a knapsack. I have crossed one border in my lifetime so I can't say it would be that tough to adjust to not going anywhere in another country. Although I probably wouldn't take the money, the grief of trying to figure out how to get out of the country and what to do with the money would be too much stress for me to handle anyway.

[MindMatter]

20. That's easy to say when

the one border you have crossed is presumably to leave the US temporarily.

The story is a little different if the decision you have to make is to live the rest of your life never leaving the Cayman Islands. There are worse places to live, but trading freedom for what is a relatively small amount of money doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

And we could be talking Bolivia or Paraguay. You would notice you lack of freedom there in a hurry, I guarantee you. And you might find it pretty difficult to keep your hands on that money. After all, the banks don't play by the rules. That's why they would let you in.

[ihavenobias]

22. You make a good point *except* for the "relatively small amount of money"

Those are some rich relatives you must have to make such a statement WRT $2 million dollars. ;)

[sandnsea]

26. You must be really well off

Living the rest of my life on the Cayman Islands, with no money worries, is unbelievably tempting. Especially if I could arrange to have my family flown in at will. Like I said though, the stress of figuring out the details would be the key reason I didn't do it, which is also the reason I'll never be rich otherwise. Wouldn't know where to begin.

[Submariner]

2. An acquaintance had a bank mistakenly deposit $4 million

into their savings account. A large Boston bank. They didn't do anything and just let it sit there in the account. About a month or two later the bank retrieved the mis-directed $4 mil, but left something like $7000 interest in their account that the bank said they could keep. The bank only wanted the $4 mil back.

[Systematic Chaos]

4. At one of my casino dealing jobs the office staff made a HUGH clerical error.

They put my job code in the field where my wages were supposed to go. So, instead of earning $5.25 per hour plus tips, I was shown as earning over $200 per hour! I opened my first check and it was for like $5800 for one week instead of the $400-whatever we actually made. The sad thing is that they actually gave it to me and it didn't set off any alarm bells with their accounting department. The temptation to cash that check was soooooo overwhelming, as was waiting to see if they'd keep doing it week after week, but instead I turned around, walked back to my supervisor and gave him the check so they could rectify it.

Someone I knew at another casino asked to be demoted from floor boss back down to dealer because he was just burnt out. They put him back on the tables but forgot to reduce his pay. He made an extra $5 or $6 per hour for over a year before they finally noticed it.

[silverweb]

5. If a clerk gives you too much change, do you keep it?

Same scenario in my mind.

If it's not your money, you should report the error and not spend it. Anything else is theft.

[ihavenobias]

6. They talked about that on the show

everyone agreed it was *not* the same scenario and that no one would keep the money from a clerk, as it would likely come directly out of his/her pocket.

Read The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, trust me. You may not change your mind because of it, but you may well have a more nuanced perspective.

[CherylK]

7. It is a good question

I would like to think I would not spend any of the money but I agree that it is easy to SAY that. If I was actually in that situation I might have a different reaction. I also agree that keeping extra change from a cashier is NOT the same thing in my opinion.

[delt664]

8. If this is the same story I read about a few days ago....

It was actually 5 mil they put in his account and he spent 2 of it. AFTER he went to the bank more than once and told them it wasnt his money and they need to take it out of his account. The banks response : "No this is your money. Do whatever you want with it."

Me? im cashing 1 mil of that into a cayman or swiss account or something and then investing the rest into things like gold, mutual funds, and other commodity futures, and moving my ass to Mexico or some other tropical country before anyone is much the wiser.

Unfortunately, this guy lost almost all of it in bad investments (it sounded like he got scammed)

[ihavenobias]

11. Oh well, same basic idea but thanks for the clarification!

I must have missed that.

So again I ask, should he go to jail?

[delt664]

18. Should he go to jail?

Hell no, he tried to do the right thing.

[ihavenobias]

19. I'm referring to the guy who spent $2 million dollars

I don't think he tried to do the right thing, I think he did the thing that *most* people would do IF they thought they wouldn't get caught (despite their claims that they would never spend the money no matter what).

[delt664]

30. I see

Well in that case, he probably should go to jail, but not for 25 years. Perhaps 2-5 would be appropriate IMHO. But some of the blame also rests up on the "victim", the bank.

[ikojo]

9. I had something similar to this happen to a former

roommate. We both worked at the same insurance company and one payday she opened her check and saw that it was for about $10k. We worked a lot of overtime but not THAT much OT!!! She went back and forth with herself but did decide to alert the payroll department of the error. They told her that they appreciated her honesty because they'd have never caught it!

After my roommate heard that she was wishing she hadn't been so honest. We feared that they would catch it and she could possibly be fired for not reporting it.

[ihavenobias]

10. Exactly, your roommate had an honest response

She didn't keep the money *because she was scared of getting caught*, not because she thought it was the "right thing to do" (in a perfect world we would all think that, but I'm being realistic here).

I'm not saying this applies to everyone, but I think it applies to a lot if not most people. IME, people can be incredibly moral and righteous when they aren't truly tempted to be anything else.

[Crunchy Frog]

14. I'd grab the money and run to South America.

[Voice for Peace]

16. It would be hard to walk away from two million dollars, but

being a moral person, I would have to think it through very carefully to
1. be sure it wouldn't hurt anybody if I just kept the money
2. make a plan to appear that I was innocent if I did decide to keep it.

eg, a notarized statement saying "Mike Huckabee taught me to expect miracles,
and I believe that this money came to me directly from God who knows
I am poor."


or
"my fortune cookie at the chinese restaurant told me I would
soon be very rich."
or
"I had bought a lottery ticket and I thought the money in my bank meant
I had won the lottery, so I was really happy."

or ?
other excuses a jury would believe?

[Wizard777]

17. Have they arrested the bank employee that deposited the money into his account as an accessory ?

Anyone can deposit money into your account. But they need your account number to do that. I just don't see how that "accidentally" happened? They may have had the same name. But not the same account number. A search for the account by name should have revealed both accounts. Which should have prompted a request for more information.

[navarth]

24. that's a funny one k & r

the thing is....you're going to get caught. even if you say 'morality, schmorality' they're gonna get you, dog.

can't do it.

well.....if I WAS gonna do it, I'd play dumb. Just keep paying my bills out of that account. I'd have my bills paid for free until they caught it and then I'd plead ignorance and absent-mindedness. 'Sorry judge, I never pay close attention to my account. There was money in it so I figured my wife had transferred some in and I just wrote my checks as usual'.

It's the greedy ones that get caught every time.

But no, I wouldn't do it. And if the guy goes to jail, it shouldn't be for long.


***This is a big reason why I like The Turks. Not only is there passion about important issues, there's also fun stuff.

Thanks for the tip on the Mark Twain story, I gotta check that.

[Common Sense Party]

27. I find it incredibly sad that these talking heads, and many DUers,

think there's nothing wrong with taking money that doesn't belong to you.

I would absolutely NOT spend it. I would talk to the highest-up bank manager I could and alert him or her about what happened.

Who knows? Maybe I'd get a finder's fee or a reward for "returning" it. But even if I didn't, I'd have a clear conscience.

Honesty is always the best policy.

Call me old-fashioned.

[ihavenobias]

28. Human Nature

Right or wrong, it is what it is.

I still maintain that it's incredibly easy to take the high-ground in any given hypothetical. And I highly recommend you read Mark Twain's 'The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg' which touches on this issue:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_That_Corrupted_Hadleyburg

[Common Sense Party]

29. Well, fiction is nice, but it isn't reality. And human nature is imperfect,

but that's what we're expected to rise above. We can choose how we respond to any situation.

It's easy to take the high ground in any hypothetical, it's true.

It's also easy to take the high ground in real life.

You just have to decide ahead of time what your standards and values are, and not compromise. The decision of integrity is usually made well BEFORE the moment of temptation.

And if we are not honest in the small things of life--the tiny, day-to-day decisions--we'll find it much harder to be honest in the big things, like "finding" $2 million in your bank account.

[ihavenobias]

31. This particular work of fiction reflects reality quite well, and Twain had brilliant insight

into human nature IMO.

At any rate, yes, of course we should try to rise above it. But when having a candid discussion about if people should or shouldn't keep the money, I'm not going to chastise someone for saying they might *consider* it, IF no individual were to ultimately lose money (which was part of the deal in the original discussion).

And again, my point stands that people try to avoid temptation at all costs (lead us not into temptation) because there's a good chance they would fail the test. Of course it's not much of a test if you're never really tempted.

I don't disagree that "the right thing to do" is to not take the money. But people often have complicated motivations, and it's overly simplistic IMO to believe that most people who say they wouldn't touch a dollar are ONLY doing it because it's "the right thing to do". How many of them are simply scared of getting caught? A huge number. How many think they will be punished in the afterlife? A good amount I'm sure. Rather than acknowledging those things, many people like the *appearance* of taking the high road (to others and even themselves), so they quickly respond from the moral high ground.

[KansDem]

32. Maybe he could have bought the prison, then as the owner...

he could demand to be let out.

You gotta think ahead with these things!