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A BANK error saw a homeless man receive over $37,000 in cash at an ATM, but he did not have it for long.
The man had been sleeping alongside the ATM at a TD Bank in Maine when he was moved along by police officers.
However, the South Portland police department was called again at 5:30 am on April 4, 2014, by a woman waiting to use the machine.
She reported the homeless man to the police saying that he had been at the ATM for a long time.
When officers arrived at the scene the man was stuffing over $37,000 in cash into a shopping bag.
Police and local residents were confused by what had occurred.
“How can you withdraw that much money from an ATM? I can only withdraw $200 at a time,” one member of the public told CBS News affiliate WGME-TV.
“This is a first,” police lieutenant Todd Bernard admitted to the news outlet.
He explained that the homeless man who has not been identified used a bank card to withdraw $140 from his account.
However, he then kept using the card and more and more cash came out of the malfunctioning ATM.
“He was using his bank card to request more money,” Bernard said.
Officers returned the money to the bank but TD chose not to press charges against the man.
“I think that’s really nice of them and I think it’s the right thing to do,” resident Sarah Howard told the news outlet.
“Obviously, he was kind of tricking the system a little bit but it was partially their fault for not having the right security on it.”
“If the bank was giving it he wasn’t stealing it, he was just playing the slot machine so to speak,” fellow resident Marcia Giancola said.
The machine was out of service for the rest of the day.
“Due to a code error, this TD Bank ATM dispensed an incorrect amount of cash to a customer,” a spokesperson for the bank said.
They confirmed that no other customers were impacted by this error.
ATMs in different locations tend to hold different amounts of cash.
Those nearer shopping malls have more than those on the street while ATMS inside banks can have up to $200,000, according to WGME.
The U.S. Sun has reached out to South Portland Police and TD Bank for comment.
