What would you buy if you suddenly found $1 million in your bank account? A Russian man bought himself new property, new cars, a single iPhone, and six years in prison after spending what was actually the bank’s money.
Newsweek shares that Roman Yurkov discovered $1.3 million in his bank account due to a technical error before going on a weird spending spree:
Yurkov insists that his bank told him that there was no issue with his bank account, so he convinced himself that the newfound fortune came from a payout from gambling.
The 35-year-old car salesman took advantage of an error during a technical update in his bank’s mobile application in June 2020 and withdrew funds from the account through bookmakers, according to the investigation and as reported by Lenta.ru.
He proceeded to make 220 transactions on the night of May 31, 2020, including a new BMW and Mercedes because you can’t have just one, four new apartments because all that money has to go somewhere, and oddly, a single new iPhone.
Unfortunately, Yurkov’s “gamble” is one that he ultimately lost after the bank completed a quarterly report that made the banking error apparent. By the time Yurkov was arrested and the bank got its hands back on its cash, only $540,000 was left out of the $1.3 million that was mistakenly placed in his account.
He was found guilty of taking advantage of a mistake in his bank’s software by a court this week, which is bad news if you’re him. The good news is he’ll be out in time for the iPhone 18 if he plays his cards right. Let that be a lesson to all of us for what to do with found money.
