Alyeska wrote:I would look at the money laugh nervously, then contemplate what to do. Would probably involve a phone call to my mother. She would tell me to turn it into the bank, which I would likely do in short order. Life is already complicated. I needn't make it more so.
You can't decide whether or not to steal millions of dollars without calling your mum?
Sky Captain wrote:What I don`t get is how they managed to extract that much money in cash from their bank account. Having a 10 million $ accidentally dumped in your account is one thing, but getting even less than half of it out in cash without attracting attention is completely another thing. I doubt you can simply go into bank and just ask I want 4 million in cash from my account handed out.
Even most bank centrals with their huge vaults require prior notification of such large withdrawals, yeah. They probably only took a small part of the money and went on a wild vacation, rather than really running from the authorities.
On the "steal a million bucks" angle I asked before, myself I would maybe have done it a few years ago, but right now - no chance. Funny how being married and settled down changes things...
JULY 20TH 1969 - The day the entire world was looking up
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small. - NEIL ARMSTRONG, MISSION COMMANDER, APOLLO 11
Signature dedicated to the greatest achievement of mankind.
MILDLY DERANGED PHYSICIST does not mind BREAKING the SOUND BARRIER, because it is INSURED. - Simon_Jester considering the problems of hypersonic flight for Team L.A.M.E.
Stark wrote:Well I meant 'only nice people who won't tell the boss/cops/jesus about what I said', but I believe FB reveals your status publicly even if your profile is private. In all parts of life people who can't understand the internet is public get screwed by their own stupid gloating horseshit on social networking sites.
Status isn't public unless the whole profile is public, but it's small beans to just ask someone on their friends list if they can log in and let the investigators look, or even wait until one of them sees the update and decides to help the investigation. Also, depending on what "networks" they're part of, unless their profiles were private, someone with the right networking connections could have just decided to do a Facebook search on their names and gotten access.
Alyeska wrote:I would look at the money laugh nervously, then contemplate what to do. Would probably involve a phone call to my mother. She would tell me to turn it into the bank, which I would likely do in short order. Life is already complicated. I needn't make it more so.
You can't decide whether or not to steal millions of dollars without calling your mum?
Good advice is hard to come by. Besides, my mom is a CPA.
"If the facts are on your side, pound on the facts. If the law is on your side, pound on the law. If neither is on your side, pound on the table."
"The captain claimed our people violated a 4,000 year old treaty forbidding us to develop hyperspace technology. Extermination of our planet was the consequence. The subject did not survive interrogation."
Sky Captain wrote:What I don`t get is how they managed to extract that much money in cash from their bank account. Having a 10 million $ accidentally dumped in your account is one thing, but getting even less than half of it out in cash without attracting attention is completely another thing. I doubt you can simply go into bank and just ask I want 4 million in cash from my account handed out.
I'd suspect it was taken out in the form of a very large number of cashier's cheques; in the banking system those are functionally like cash. And they've had the past week to go from bank to bank in China cashing them in for local currency.
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. -- Wikipedia's No Original Research policy page.
Stark wrote:Well I meant 'only nice people who won't tell the boss/cops/jesus about what I said', but I believe FB reveals your status publicly even if your profile is private. In all parts of life people who can't understand the internet is public get screwed by their own stupid gloating horseshit on social networking sites.
Status isn't public unless the whole profile is public, but it's small beans to just ask someone on their friends list if they can log in and let the investigators look, or even wait until one of them sees the update and decides to help the investigation. Also, depending on what "networks" they're part of, unless their profiles were private, someone with the right networking connections could have just decided to do a Facebook search on their names and gotten access.
Or they could just ask Facebook staff to let them have a look at any of the private sections.
Honestly, I'd be sorely tempted to try and take some of it; but the core problem is that I know that it would be a matter of record that funds disappeared after I had checked my account and became aware of the funds existing there in the first place. That makes me suspect number one, plain and simple.
The only semi plausible scenario I can think of off the top of my head is getting a close friend to 'rob' me of my card and pin number, and then go on a spree of emptying bank machines once this 'crook' realized how much money was in my account.
Then my buddy and I would simply split the loot afterwards.
In all seriousness though, I'd just inform the bank and try to get some publicity out of the event, and maybe get something out of it that way.
"Now let us be clear, my friends. The fruits of our science that you receive and the many millions of benefits that justify them, are a gift. Be grateful. Or be silent." -Modified Quote
There's no way I'd take the money. Even if I had a passport, could flee to a country without an extradition treaty, and take all my family and friends with me, I'd spend the rest of my life puckering my asshole every time I heard a police siren.
Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves…We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed.--Ada Louise Huxtable, "Farewell to Penn Station", New York Times editorial, 30 October 1963 X-Ray Blues
This is clearly an issue of cultural context. The option of running away with the money and becoming a fugitive just wouldn't even seriously occur to me, because I belong to the socio-economic class where you obey the laws, you have good relations with policemen, and you consider yourself to be a contributing member of ordered society. The idea of life as a fugitive is so completely foreign to me that I would laugh it off as a joke, rather than taking it seriously as a course of action.
For some others, they are somewhat accustomed to the idea of being a scofflaw, so the first thing that comes to mind in that circumstance is to abscond with the money.
"It's not evil for God to do it. Or for someone to do it at God's command."- Jonathan Boyd on baby-killing
"you guys are fascinated with the use of those "rules of logic" to the extent that you don't really want to discussus anything."- GC
"I do not believe Russian Roulette is a stupid act" - Embracer of Darkness
"Viagra commercials appear to save lives" - tharkûn on US health care.
Darth Wong wrote:The option of running away with the money and becoming a fugitive just wouldn't even seriously occur to me, because I belong to the socio-economic class where you obey the laws, you have good relations with policemen, and you consider yourself to be a contributing member of ordered society.
And that's all that matters in such a situation. The simple fact is that these people are thieves. It's not their money. I don't care what kind of hand they were dealt. There is no way to rationalize it. Whether I found a sack of cash on the side of the road or saw that my account was suddenly and grossly inflated, the very first course of action I take is to contact the bank or police.
Once you calmly rationalise it, the right decision is obvious. That is, if you're the kind of person who is not motivated by pure and unadultered greed.
hongi wrote:Once you calmly rationalise it, the right decision is obvious. That is, if you're the kind of person who is not motivated by pure and unadultered greed.
...who probably feels he has nothing to lose since their business was "struggling".
Still the wrong decision, but people are not exactly rational in the first place.
Whoever says "education does not matter" can try ignorance
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A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is 'survival as what'? A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! - Chief Judge Haywood
------------ My LPs
The brazen Kiwi couple at the centre of an embarrassing multimillion-dollar bank loan blunder appear to have parted ways in Asia, New Zealand police say.
Leo Gao, 29, and his girlfriend Kara Yang, 30, fled New Zealand three weeks ago after $NZ10 million ($7.8 million) was accidentally deposited in Gao's Westpac bank account.
The bank gaffe occurred when a decimal point was omitted from a loan clearance form.
Police have been searching for the couple in Hong Kong but revealed today that the pair were apparently no longer travelling together.
A relative who returned from Hong Kong on Monday told police it was not known where Gao was.
The family member, believed to be Yang's younger sister Aroha Hurring, told police she had been with Yang in Hong Kong, but not Gao.
"The individual has told police that Kara was still in the Hong Kong area but they did not know the current whereabouts of Leo Gao," New Zealand police said in a statement.
"This person is being treated as a witness and has not been charged with any offence."
Westpac clawed back most of the money but Gao still has access to $NZ3.8 million.
The cash couldn't have come at a better time for Gao and Yang, whose struggling petrol station in the tourist town of Rotorua went into receivership just a few days after they fled the country.
An international search has been under way for the party, which included Yang's daughter Leena, 7, and Hurring.
Hurring's regular Facebook updates on their travels through Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China, as well as calls home to relatives, had been helping police track the pair.
Detective Senior Sergeant David Harvey again called for Gao and Yang to return to New Zealand.
"I again urge them to reflect on their options, take the opportunity to come back to New Zealand and get this matter resolved before all the money is spent," he said today.
The detective said the couple were unlikely to be charged with theft as they had not physically handled the money involved, but they could face charges relating to using a computer to access the money.
AAP
Never apologise for being a geek, because they won't apologise to you for being an arsehole. John Barrowman - 22 June 2014 Perth Supernova.
Countries I have been to - 14.
Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, Germany, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, USA.
Always on the lookout for more nice places to visit.
Hey, even if he returns right now on the basis of that, he skipped out on a business that went into receivership. There's more than a few people that will be unhappy with him before we even get to Westpac.
