Bank of Ireland ATM's Spit Out Free Money to Idiots Who Thought They Wouldn't Have to Pay It Back

NY Post - Hundreds of Bank of Ireland customers rushed to ATMs across the country Tuesday night after a technical glitch allowed them to withdraw up to $1,000 in money they didn’t have in their accounts, according to local reports.

Cars lined up outside the Bank of Ireland location in Lisduggan at 10 p.m. where customers were cashing in on the seemingly “free” cash, local station WLR reported.

One person told the outlet that they withdrew more than $1,000 from their account — more than they had in their checkings. Another said they cashed out $500.

Ireland’s national police, the Garda Síochána, told the Independent that it was aware of an “unusual volume of activity” at ATMs across the county.

An IT error with the online app allowed customers to transfer up to $1,000 from their Bank of Ireland accounts into a Revolut account — even if their balances were near zero, according to WLR. They could then withdraw the cash from an ATM.

This is just so obviously a "too good to be true" situation. Sounds pretty awesome at first, right? ATM's at the Bank of Ireland are spitting out one free stack to anyone with a bank account. But c'mon Ireland. How dumb do you have to be to think you're going to get away with that?

What is the best case scenario here? Because when they went to the ATM, they still had to put their debit card information into the machine. The bank still knows who withdrew the money. Unless the technological error was so bad, and the glitch causes the bank's computers to completely short circuit and lose all tracking information so that it has no idea who took out the money... But what are the chances of that? "Banks are notoriously sloppy with their security, and bad at tracking down their money."

That's not how this works.  

However, the glitch in the system isn’t the free cash grab some customers believed it to be.

Bank of Ireland warned customers withdrawing and transferring funds that exceeded the amount of cash in their accounts that they will have to pay the money back.

“We would like to remind customers if transferring/withdrawing funds — including over normal limits — this money will be debited from their account,” the company tweeted. “We are conscious customers may not be able to check balances, but should not withdraw/transfer if they are likely to become overdrawn.”

No shit. The bank is now probably going to slam everyone who overdrew their account with an overdraft fee. So not only do they have to give the money back, but they owe interest on top of it.

If these people were dumb enough to think this was really free case, then I'm sure many of them were dumb enough to spend their $1000 on potatoes and Guinness that very night. Now they owe the bank an amount of money they don't have.

I can't imagine thinking that you'd get away with that. Maybe if this was a shady ATM covered in graffiti at a gas station somewhere in Louisiana, it might be a different story. I still think you'd be fucked, but I can see a world where an old crappy ATM spits out a bunch of money and doesn't track it properly.

Maybe these people just don't care. I oftentimes underestimate how little respect some people pay to the rules of society. Maybe in their mind they said, "Fuck it. I can press a few button and get $1000? Sounds great. I'll just deal with the consequences never." And they'll just let the overdraft fees pile up until they owe the bank a felonies worth of money.

UNLESS

And this is a BIG unless. But it is possible that some of these people had a plan. There are ways you can use this banking glitch to your advantage, and make yourself a profit. You gotta spend money to make money right? Have you heard of selling drugs? 

Think about it. Anybody who withdrew money will likely have a few business days to pay it back. Maybe even longer. Say you're a man of drugs (i.e. me circa mid-2010's). Say you can quickly turn that money into a significant amount of cocaine. Then you hit the streets. If you know what you're doing, you can double that money in no time. Especially if you know how to cook crack. Within a few days, you pay the bank back, and pocket the additional $1000 you've earned from drug dealing. Then buy another bag and repeat. This glitch could be the very thing someone needed to get their drug empire off the ground. All it takes is one stash. Jay-Z turned a bag of crack into billions of dollars (idk if that's true but I think he said that in a rap once). 

I'm starting to do a 180 on this whole situation. You wouldn't necessarily have to make your money via drugs either. You can use $1000 to buy yourself a brand new suit, which will give you the confidence to knock the socks off the company you interview with, and kickstart a lucrative career as a legitimate business man. Or maybe spend the $1000 on some sort of raffle ticket that wins you a dinner with Jay-Z himself, which we all know has the street value of roughly $500k. 

So fuck it. If you have a plan for the money, then go for it. But if you don't have a plan, you have to be the biggest moron in the world to think you're going to get away with that.