alt Hacker NewsAn acquaintance of mine was accidentally wired about $100k when it was supposed to be $5k. Before it could be reversed, they moved accounts and immediately bought a one way flight out of country. They then changed all socials and handles. They are now ignoring all court documents and are on track to get a default judgement against them.
Their rationale? “It’s mine, they owed me this”. They are 100% convinced that they are in the right, not just that they can keep it but that they actually intended to send them this to begin with. I get it $100k isn’t nothing but they’re also throwing their life away for less than what they used to make a year in salary.
People do weird things when given sudden access to money or power.
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> An acquaintance of mine was accidentally wired about $100k when it was supposed to be $5k. Before it could be reversed, they moved accounts and immediately bought a one way flight out of country. They then changed all socials and handles. They are now ignoring all court documents and are on track to get a default judgement against them.
$95k does not seems like enough money to totally upend your life like that for.
> People do weird things when given sudden access to money or power.
It's more that money and power enable you to be who you really are, and amplify your worst traits if you're lacking self-awareness.
There are many people who are rich/wealthy and/or powerful and they're decent individuals living relatively ordinary lives. You don't read about most of them because they're "normal".
Finance somehow accidentally paid me approximately a whole years salary at once when they did the first payroll run after we were acquired.
My first thought was I hope they didn't make this mistake for everyone, and second thought how do I safely return this.
(Turns out it was a one off mistake, and returning the excess was pretty straightforward though probably the largest bank transfer I've ever made)
> they moved accounts and immediately bought a one way flight out of country
To be fair this is smarter than like 95% of white-collar criminals.
> People do weird things when given sudden access to money or power.
Given your story its not sounds like this is power grab. More like they actually on spectrum and have some mental issues on top this. Or had mental breakdown because something happened before that money arrived.
Situations when people do something weird, bad or just plain evil for money and power are usually logical. E.g people think they got access to more money they percieve they can earn in next decade, or ever, something that settles them for life.
Earning more than $100,000 and throwing everything away for $95,000 only make sense if you are terminally ill. Or if it was never your real identify in first place and its well planned scam.
Maybe there were other factors? Maybe they were leaning towards leaving anyway and this influx of cash enabled them to do so? It’s a stupid idea, for sure, but I think the explanation that “people do weird things when faced with a lot of money” is not really all that explanatory.
> People do weird things when given sudden access to money or power.
10 years ago my last boss told me one last advice before going onto entrepreneur ventures: « be careful, people do become crazy and stupid with money » (and I guess he knew what he was talking about…)
They upended their life for $100K?
I wouldn’t do that for a million (these days).
Hell, I used to know a guy who did this to steal a monitor from work. Went all the way down to Panama or something.
This reminds me of the kids in MR. Deeds.
Kid 1: What are you going to do with your $20,000
Kid2: quit school
Homeless man: good idea, school is for fools!!
> They are 100% convinced that they are in the right, not just that they can keep it but that they actually intended to send them this to begin with.
They quite clearly do not believe that. If they did, they wouldn't need to go into hiding or leave the country.
There's a line from the movie The Way of the Gun that I love about this. The number is higher, but it still applies. Some criminals are loading a $15 million ransom into the back of a truck, and a younger criminal says, "Boy, $15 million is a lot of money, huh?" and James Caan, playing an older, wiser criminal says,
"Money? $15 million is not 'money'. It's a motive, with a universal adapter on it."
100k really isn't that much money in the grand scheme of things, especially because they will probably get caught anyway.
[dead]
> immediately bought a one way flight out of country
Is this referring to a foreign national who can leave at any time?
I had a client send me an ACH that was legitimately a fat finger extra zero. For me, it was a "lot" of truck payments. For them, it was a rounding error that they were unaware of until I reached out and let them know about their mistake. I couldn't wait to make it right with them because it bothered me so much because suddenly I had a pile of money that was theirs and not mine.