You’d think it’d be a dream, waking up to find you’re suddenly a millionaire.
That’s what happened to Clare Wainwright, a lawyer from Sydney. She woke up one morning, checked her bank balance, and discovered that, to her surprise, she had $24.5 million deposited in her account.
Most people would be fairly happy to have that kind of money come into their lives, but so suddenly and without explanation? Something wasn’t right.
$25 Million Mistake: Aussie bank transferred $25 million into Clare Wainwright's account. https://t.co/N499W5dJsd #sun7 pic.twitter.com/4RkKXOqfSr
— Sunrise (@sunriseon7) October 27, 2017
Previously, Clare had received a mortgage letter from National Australia Bank (NAB) stating that her monthly repayments would be a staggering $25,102,107, while it was actually supposed to be the more reasonable sum of $2,500.
The bank took the substantial figure from Clare’s account, leaving her heavily overdrawn. Of course, this was just a mistake, albeit a huge one, but in rectifying the error the bank made another one: instead of bringing Clare’s balance back to what it was, another $24.5 million was deposited in her account.
“When NAB accidentally pays out your entire mortgage, and gives you an extra $24.5mil to redraw … do I skip the country??” she wrote on Facebook, with a picture of her somewhat inflated bank account.
Speaking to Fairfax Media, Clare said she never had any intention of spending the money: “I’m a lawyer, which is why I haven’t spent the money. Mostly because I figured it wouldn’t play out that well trying to play dumb on that.”
“I saw it and I thought ‘Oh my gosh, it’s 25 mil’ and I laughed,” she said. “I showed my broker and he said ‘Oh god, I’ll get them to fix it’.”
But if she could have spent the money? “I’d pay off my mortgage and buy another place,” she said. “Or an island.”
