A WOMAN was stunned when she noticed an extra £40,000 in her bank account and had no idea where it came from.
It turned out the money had been wired to her by mistake – but she was still able to keep the cash and go on a shopping spree.
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Aprille Franks, a life and business coach from Las Vegas, says she was able to buy a house and a car “legally” with the cash when the bank failed to follow its own policy on transaction errors.
She shared details of the incredible story with her thousands of TikTok followers.
Aprille explained that roughly 20 years ago she received a letter to say that £39,905 had been sent to her bank account.
Thinking this was a mistake she frantically began to call family members trying to get to the bottom of where the mystery money had come from.
When she found no explanation Aprille called the bank to report the error.
However, this was when the plot thickened as they refused to admit that the cash had been sent to the wrong account and said the transaction was legitimate.
Aprille immediately sought legal advice as she was in a state of bewilderment due to her new found wealth.
In the TikTok video she can be seen saying: “And a lawyer told me exactly to do this.
“I went and I saw a lawyer, cause I was like what am I supposed to do with this money? What are my rights? What is the law?
He said, “Report it again, document everything and don’t touch any of the money for 30 days”.
He also told Aprille to make a public post so that anyone who thought the money was theirs could come forward and make a claim.
She added: “He said if they don’t claim it, it’s yours.”
The life coach claims that’s exactly what happened, but many of her followers were curious about how she managed to keep hold of the money.
She published several follow-up videos explaining what she did with the cash.
She said: “In short I spent it but here’s what I bought.
“I bought a house, I bought a second house that we flipped and made $22,000 dollars, me and the guy that I was dating at the time.
“I bought a car and we lived on it and I lived off that money, I was working full-time…making like $31,000 a year…it took me about a year and a half to spend all the money.”
Viewers were quick to question how she had got away with keeping cash that was never meant for her account.
One seemed to disapprove and wrote: “You must be slow to think you can convince me that you didn’t break the law.
“You knew the money wasn’t yours and kept it. “That’s stealing. YOU got lucky.”
But, in a video response, Aprille claims she tried her best to return the money and that the bank had failed to conduct an investigation in the correct time frame.
Speaking to her army of Tiktok followers, she said: “I tried to give the money back what part of that did you not hear?
“I called the bank when I got it and said this is not my money, they said yes it is and I said no it’s not.”
She says she questioned the bank over their policy when it comes to reporting transaction errors to which they replied that they had ten days to investigate.
She says no criminal or civil charges were ever brought against her because the bank failed to launch a probe in the days that followed.
Aprille claims she also received a call from a lawyer months later asking for the cash back on the bank’s behalf.
She allegedly told the lawyer she was within her right to keep the hoard of cash because she had reported the error and the bank had failed to follow its own policy.
She added: “They didn’t have any grounds.”
“So after 30 days, I started spending the money cause then after 30 days the money belonged to me.
“That’s why they had no grounds. Then when they called me, the reason that they didn’t send the police was because it wasn’t a criminal act, then they wanted to make it a civil situation because they f**ked up.”
Aprille claims to have also kept all of the letters, recorded phone calls and conversations that prove she attempted to return the cash.
She said: “It was just amateur hour at the bank like whoever was handling that didn’t handle it.”
She added: “I didn’t break the law and yeah I did get lucky. Good for me. That’s how my life has been. Pretty f**king lucky”.
The Sun has reached out to Aprille Franks for comment after she kept hold of the cash.
Recipients of erroneous bank deposits are not entitled to keep the money.
In most circumstances, the bank in question will spot the error and reverse the transaction automatically.
Anyone who spends the money is likely to be hit with criminal charges.
A man also had the shock of his life when £127,000 landed unexpectedly in his bank account.
He tried to hold onto the cash but was later jailed for a month after authorities were unable to locate the missing money.
The cash was put into his account in October 2021 after a medical trading company meant to send the money to a client instead, court reports revealed.
The unidentified man told the judge that he had used the cash to pay for rent and bills but the rest of the money is now missing.
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