Barman discovered ‘free money’ ATM glitch and took out $1.6m in just four months
An Australian barman who discovered a glitch at an ATM ended up getting his hands on around £850,000 of ‘free money’ before eventually coming clean.
Dan Saunders had been drinking with a few pals at a local pub in Wangaratta, Victoria, back in 2011 when he visited a cash machine and accidentally discovered a pretty huge technical loophole.
After heading to a National Australia Bank's ATM, Saunders attempted to transfer $200 from his credit card to his bank account, which at the time had a balance of just $3.
The ATM told Saunders the transaction had failed, but the money still instantly appeared in his account, the Daily Mail reports.
Advert
With his wallet now a bit heavier, Saunders headed back to the bar and shouted his mates a few rounds until the bar eventually closed.
As he walked home in the rain, Saunders decided to try his luck at the ATM again and, somewhat unbelievably, the same thing happened.
Saunders, who is now appearing in a new True Crime Central YouTube series about his experiences, said he managed to take around $19,140 out of the machine in that one night.
“I put the money in my wallet and, yeah, just went home, went to bed, and I remember distinctly waking up in the morning and I was like, ‘Oh, hell of a dream. That was a weird dream to have,’” he recalled.
“Then I knelt, looked to the side, and on the right-hand side of me was this bedside table and a wallet full of cash. And I was like, ‘Wow, that really did happen’.”
After that first night, Saunders tried his luck again and discovered that the same technical hitch hit every time, so long as he attempted to transfer the cash between 1am and 3am.
In an interview with Vice last year, Saunders explained: “I figured there was a lag between what the ATM gave me and what my bank balance was, which meant that whatever I spent, I could cover it by doing a simple transfer every night between my credit account and my savings.
“I could ‘create’ the money by doing a transfer between one and three in the morning, which is when I realised ATMs go offline.”
Saunders said that the transfer at night would go through and then reverse the following day.
“But if you stayed ahead of that reversal by doing another one, you could trick the system into thinking you had millions,” he added.
In the end, Saunders helped himself to AU$1.6million (around £850,000) over four months and splashed the cash on fancy restaurants, luxe hotels, private jets and gambling.
However, after a few months guilt and anxiety set in and Saunders called the bank in 2012 to confess to what he’d done.
He told Vice that the bank told him the police would be in touch and warned him he was ‘in a lot of trouble’.
But Saunders, who now works in hospitality, said that the police never came knocking and in an attempt to resolve the matter he ended up going on a Current Affair as well as partaking in several newspaper interviews to talk about what he’d been up to.
"Basically, it took three print stories and an appearance on national TV to be taken seriously,” he said.
Saunders eventually ended up in court where he pled guilty and was given a one-year prison sentence.
He was also ordered to pay back $200,000 and given 18-months of community service.
Claire Reid