Money weirdnessFollow

The background:

Mr. Ambrya and I have two checking accounts, one which he had before we started dating/got married (I've since been added to that account once we got married) the other we got as a joint account back when when first moved in together but hadn't married yet.

The first account we use for "official" expenses, paying bills, property taxes, gas, groceries, etc, and the second account we occasionally drop some extra cash into for our fun money. It pays for dinners out, the occasional new book or CD or gizmo, or whatnot. It's our way of making sure we don't eat dinner out using money that needs to be paying the mortgage, and also since the first account is at a credit union with very limited locations and ATMS and the second is at a larger chain bank, it gives us the option of convenient access when we're out and about.

With me so far?


The situation:

Yesterday, Mr. Ambrya stops by the the bank where we hold the second account to deposit some funds, and discovers that the balance is about $1500 higher than either of us expects it to be. He calls me and asks if I deposited money into it, and I hadn't, so he asks me to investigate it today, which I did.

About 2 weeks ago (Oct 31) someone deposited a $1500 check into the account at a branch in Bellevue WA, which is about 3 hours north of here, near Seattle. Neither of us have been in the Seattle area since mid-August, when we went up for an overnighter in Redmond as Mr. Ambrya had a job interview at the giant software company generally considered to be in league with Satan. We passed through Bellevue on the interstate on the way to Redmond, but we didn't stop, and certainly never hit a bank there.

The check was a personal check made out to Mr. Ambrya, but from a person we don't know. I saw the scanned copy of the thing--it very clearly has Mr. Ambrya's name on it, but neither of us has a clue who the person who wrote it is. So as far as we can figure, these are the possible theories:

Theory 1) There's someone else with Mr. Ambrya's name who also has an account at the bank chain we use, and the check in question was supposed to go into THAT account, thus this is all a mistake. Doesn't make sense though, that in two weeks, the person who was supposed to receive those funds has not yet noticed that he hasn't, in fact, received them and raised a fuss over it.

Theory 2) Someone is using our account to pull a scam of some sort. Perhaps someone got ahold of Mr. Ambrya's debit card (He doesn't use it often) or acquired a debit card to the account somehow, and is using our account to deposit and withdraw ill-gotten funds. Problem with that theory, though, is why would they leave the money sitting in the account for over 2 weeks?

Theory 3) We have a mysterious benefactor. Not as absurd as it sounds, I don't think--follow my reasoning. When people (for instance, Mr. Ambrya's parents) attempt to give us gifts of money, we generally protest and attempt to refuse and the situation usually devolves into them insisting upon it, and us refusing, until finally we give in because to protest any more would be ungracious. If the people in question wanted to give the expected parents of their first grandchild a very large, generous gift without a replay of that scene times 50, it probably wouldn't be all that difficult to "filter" the funds through a friend or distant relative with whom we're not familiar. Possible downfalls of that scenario are that 1) not sure anyone outside the two of us knows about the second account, 2) not sure any of our relations who would consider making a gift of that size are actually that crafty or clever, and 3) theory is possibly just a way to rationalize the greedy fact that I REALLY want us to be able to keep the money.


So at this point, I'm not sure what to do. The bank doesn't seem to think there's a problem--the check was obviously made out to Mr. Ambrya, therefore it's obviously in the right account. If someone is trying to run a scam using our account, I want to shut them down and make sure they don't succeed. However, if we withdraw the funds so that whoever it is can't get them when they come back for them we may end up getting hit with a bunch of overcharge fees and whatnot (or having to pay the amount back should the bank discover an error was, in fact, made.) We could close the account completely, but then the same problem of owing the money back in the case of an error still exists, plus, should the "mysterious benefactor" ever attempt another deposit, they won't be able to do so.

Any suggestions on how to handle this?

They couldn't print it out at the branch I visited today. Not sure if that's because they couldn't physically print it, or because it has what could be considered sensitive information on it (checking account/routing number for someone else's checking account) on it which they aren't allowed to let us have.

The one other thing I forgot to mention is that the last name on the check was just slightly mispelled. Ours has one L in the middle, and the name on the check was spelled the same, but with LL instead of just the single L (for instance--this is not our name--but "Scholler," where it should have been spelled "Scholer") I didn't think much of it, because our name is frequently misspelled that exact way.







Edited, Nov 16th 2006 at 4:34pm PST by Ambrya

4. Mr. Ambrya's a high class gay escort.

Think about it.

simple....

1.withdraw everything
2.close account
3.open bank account with different bank/credit union
4.deposit chedder
5.profit

Edited, Nov 16th 2006 at 7:49pm PST by Rejekted

Sounds like a good plan all around. You've done some CYA work. The bank said "nope, it's yours!", so take it and run.

I deposit money into my parents' chequing account occasionally to repay money I've borrowed. It's not actually that easy to deposit money into someone elses account, at least in Canada. Even though my parents and I have the same last name and I can verify their address, they still give me looks the odd time.

Reminds me of the story about that guy that got like a 100,000 dollars accidently deposited into his account. Instead of reporting the error he went on a huge *** spending spree. The bank and official weren't too happy with him.

your theory one is probably correct. tell the bank you dont believe it is yours and ask them to hold it in escrow for you so you dont spend it and end up in trouble. after a period of time, a few months, the money is yours.

theory two. your husband is lieing to you.

I wouldn't spend it, especially if I found out it was a mistake. Would insurance even cover you now that you've publicly stated that the money isn't yours?

Under washington state law, the bank error is the fiscal responsability of the bank. They can't even ask for the money back if it was their mistake. If it was destined for some other account, and they made an error, they have to pay for it. So its your money one way or the other now.