Dive Brief:
- A Pennsylvania couple appeared in court Monday on four felony charges of theft after BB&T Bank mistakenly deposited $120,000 into their account, and the couple spent most of it rather than contacting the bank, police said.
- Robert and Tiffany Williams of Montoursville owe $107,416 in overdraft fees, according to a complaint filed in Lycoming County magisterial district court. Their bank account had $1,121 in it before the accidental windfall, The Washington Post reported.
- Over three weeks in early June, the couple bought a camper, a car trailer and a race car, put a down payment on an SUV, paid bills and gave $15,000 to friends who said they needed it, according to court records.
Dive Insight:
A bank teller on May 31 entered a wrong account number, sending funds that were meant for Dimension Covington Investment LLC to the Williamses' joint account.
Investigators discovered the error when Dimension's account holder contacted the bank to ask about the missing deposit, an affidavit said. When the bank contacted Tiffany Williams on June 21, she said "she no longer had the funds because she had already paid off bills," the affidavit said.
Tiffany told the bank she would devise a repayment plan with her husband, but dropped communications with the bank after the June 21 conversation, television station WNEP reported.
"All I'm going to say is we took some bad legal advice from some people, and it probably wasn't the best thing in the end," Robert Williams told WNEP on Monday, outside the court.
State police were notified in early July after the bank couldn't successfully contact the couple. Both Robert, 36, and Tiffany, 35, in separate interviews with police in July, " admitted to knowing the mislaid money did not belong to them, but they spent it anyway," according to the Williamsport Sun-Gazette.
The couple faces up to 10 years in state prison for each count, WNEP reported.
"While we can't comment on the specifics of this issue due to client privacy practices, we always work as quickly as possible to address any issue that affects our clients," Brian Davis, a spokesman for BB&T, told CNN in a statement.
