Bank mistakenly deposits more than $86M into client’s account
A client of Malaysia’s biggest bank opened her account only to find that more than $86 million had mysteriously been added to her balance.
When Hafidzah Abdullah checked in on her personal checking account at Maybank late last month, the bank’s app showed that she had 404,040,404.04 ringgit — or about $86.46 million USD — in credit.
“You’d think I hit the lottery, right?” Abdullah, the seemingly lucky recipient of the hefty sum, wrote in a LinkedIn post alongside a screenshot of her multimillion-dollar account balance — made even more impressive in a country where the average household takes home roughly $22,000 per year, according to a local news site.
For reference, the average American household brings in about $75,000 annually, per the US Census Bureau.
“Well, not really — it is glitches!!!” she added in the Wednesday post, which was earlier reported on by Bloomberg.
Abdullah’s post went on to rant about her experience with Maybank, which she claimed “decided to block my account without any calls, message or notification at all.”
“They say money can’t buy happiness, but Maybank knows how to buy frustration,” added Abdullah, the director and co-founder of a human-resources firm.
The Post has sought comment from Abdullah and Maybank, which has roughly $203 billion assets under management and touts more than 2,200 branches across 20 countries, primarily in South East Asia.
Amid an array of commenters on Abdullah’s LinkedIn post agreeing that the bank has poor customer service and joking that the erroneous sum in question evidently points to “Error 404” — the infamous error message that appears in computer network communications — the bank’s head of group customer experience management, Shaikh Munir Ahmad, offered to help.
In a comment on the post, Ahmad said he’d spoken with Hafidzah and she now could access her account.
In a subsequent reply, Abdullah revealed that the problem had been resolved.
“Now [I] can access my personal account & company account,” Abdullah wrote one day after raising the issue on the social media site.
A similar situation happened at an American bank back in 2019 when a teller at North Carolina-based Truist Bank, then known as BB&T Bank, mistakenly deposited $120,000 into a Pennsylvania couple’s account.
There was one difference, though: the recipients of the dough had access to the accidental windfall — and blew through the funds within just two weeks.
Robert Williams and his wife, Tiffany Williams, reportedly spent the money on cars, bills and a camper — and even gifted friends as much as $15,000.
They were later arraigned on charges of theft and receiving stolen property.
The couple was ordered to pay back the six-figure bill they had racked up.
