BATON ROUGE, La. (WVLA) — A Baton Rouge family got the shock of a lifetime when an enormous amount of money was mistakenly deposited into their bank account.
Darren James said his wife called him frantic, telling him to have a seat before showing him that $50 billion dollars had been deposited in their account.
“It was crazy just to see what it looks like because I’ve never seem that many zeros in my life,” said James.
After noticing the money, he called his bank hoping to find out how it got there.
“I wasn’t going to keep it. The thing that was most baffling was, we don’t even know where it came from. We don’t know anybody with that kind of money,” said James.
Although he didn’t know how or why, the bank started reversing the error right away.
“A hold [was] placed on it. It showed up on Saturday to make a deposit for our daughter. It stayed there Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday it was gone,” said James.
The family took screenshots of the account to remember the once-in-a-lifetime error.
In a matter of days, their billionaire status was gone. But if there ever comes a time when their billionaire dreams come true, James said he’ll leave his mark on this world by helping others.
“There’s enough greatness in this world where we can all have a life we never thought was possible, so if I did have $50 billion, I would bless others,” said James.
If this type of mistake happens to you, it’s important to know that you cannot keep the money. Banks usually catch these errors and reverse the transaction. They can even file a police report, launching an investigation, and if anything is missing, you could face jail time.