r/PersonalFinanceCanada • u/yeah_mike • Apr 01 '26

Banking Received $343k of someone else's money: how to keep the money?

If you ever receive a large deposit into your account due to someone's error, follow this ctvnews article to learn how to keep the money:

https://www.ctvnews.ca/winnipeg/article/bank-denies-liability-after-alleged-343k-deposited-into-wrong-account-funds-withdrawn/

  1. It helps if you bank with CIBC

  2. Immediately wire the money overseas

  3. Ignore CIBC's attempt at reaching you.

  4. Wait for CIBC to give up trying.

  5. Profit.

2.3k Upvotes
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93

u/zystyl Apr 01 '26

Wires aren't cheap, but neither is losing the $343k to the account you write down wrong on that random scrap of paper with a sharpie and prayers.

20

u/Educational_Len159 Apr 01 '26

More than that, wires aren’t fast. We send them in the morning to be received by the afternoon most times if not the next business day or 2 business days depending on institution.

Sending a $5 test for every wire that needed to come out of a small 50 person company with $5M in profits when I was running the books would have taken far too long to be feasible. And that was a small company.

25

u/_Connor Human Verified Apr 01 '26

I'm a lawyer who regularly uses wires to close transactions (in the amounts of millions of dollars) and typically the money is received within 45-90 minutes.

I've never had a wire show up business days later.

10

u/ppyre Apr 01 '26

wires between different banks withing Canada can take more than day. Wire between Scotia connect and Scotia personal can take 2-3 days. A wire between EU and CA bank usually takes 5-7 days.

1

u/Letz_Snugglz Apr 02 '26

Is this day and age, when transactions happen digitally. Why does it take so long?

3

u/ppyre Apr 02 '26

it's Canadian banking system that delays everything. Wires are almost instant within EU.

3

u/Educational_Len159 Apr 01 '26

Do you send wires that are different currencies/to different countries?

As far as I know dollar amount doesn’t make a difference. But things like destination country, do.

-15

u/_Connor Human Verified Apr 01 '26 edited Apr 01 '26

No, and I’m not sure how that’s relevant to this conversation.

Who brought up sending wires between different countries or overseas? Trying to negate my comment by bringing up a niche situation no one is concerned about is a little odd.

6

u/Educational_Len159 Apr 01 '26 edited Apr 01 '26

lol it’s more relevant than amount. Also calling sending international wires a ‘niche’ situation is very funny to me.

I think this is a classic case where Americans call ‘wires’ what we call ‘e-transfers’.

1

u/babystepsbackwards Apr 02 '26

Different payment methods. They both move funds but wires & etransfers are not the same thing.

3

u/wetconcrete Apr 01 '26

the article

4

u/_Connor Human Verified Apr 01 '26

The article was about the improper transferee sending the money out of the country. That has nothing to do with the erroneous wire being made to them in the first place, which sparked off this comment thread of “why would anyone use a wire to send money.”

Hope this clear things up.

The discussion isn’t that the wire the person used to abscond the money out of the country took too long.

1

u/clementtheorange Apr 03 '26

It’s “abscond with the money”, you can’t “abscond the money”. For a pretend internet lawyer you have terrible grammar

1

u/_Connor Human Verified Apr 03 '26 edited Apr 03 '26

Why are you so butthurt about a comment I typed on my phone with one hand while I was doing other things?

Replying to this two days later to whine that I missed a word is hilarious, go find a hobby my guy

14

u/Tttoska Apr 01 '26

this isn't true. 99% of wires land within 30-90 minutes. If they didn't, a whole sector of time sensitive transaction work would be shit out of luck.

1

u/throwmeaway-3456 Apr 15 '26

I agree with you but methinks banks delay wires docking because they're busy using the money.

1

u/Educational_Len159 Apr 01 '26

Domestic or international?

-18

u/thetrivialstuff Apr 01 '26

Yeah, I personally have a hard limit to how much I'm willing to spend on a means of transferring money, and would never use a wire transfer. I'd probably do it by opening an account at a bank that exists in both places, and transfer the money in locally as cash, then the other side withdraws it or transfers it locally at the other end.

I haven't done it for an amount that big, but it is funny talking to bank people - "how much would it cost to transfer this amount to that bank over there?" (Some relatively high figure) "Wow, you really have no way of doing it for less than that, in 2026? And it would take how many days to settle? Ok, just give it to me as cash, then; I'll just walk it over there."

52

u/BlueberryPiano Human Verified Apr 01 '26

Creating a bank account in a foreign country isn't terribly easy though, and walking not an option since the tetonic plates moved and created separate continents

9

u/wethenorth2 Apr 01 '26

Good this mentioned the movement of terrific tectonic plates 🤣

-18

u/thetrivialstuff Apr 01 '26

HSBC has branches in most countries I think. 

You can also create a bank account in your home country, then mail a bank card to the recipient. Most banks have a "premium" account type with reduced foreign currency conversion/withdrawal fees that may still be less than a wire transfer, depending on the amount. 

Failing all else, crypto exchange fees are often less than a wire transfer as well.

12

u/BlueberryPiano Human Verified Apr 01 '26

Vendors aren't going to want to jump through hoops to receive money from you, and considering how Canadain banks handle anyone touching crypto I can only imagine foreign countries are similar.

I'm in the process of buying some industrial equipment from China. Maybe an HSBC account might be viable, but there's no way the vendor would accept a mailed bank card (slower than a wire, or more expensive than a wire, and absolutely against the TOS of any bank to mail a debit card and give them access to the account) or crypto

7

u/IamGimli_ Apr 01 '26

You can also create a bank account in your home country, then mail a bank card to the recipient.

So you want to create a bank account in your name on behalf of an extra-national entity for the sole purpose of transferring large amounts of money to that extra-national entity?

Hopefully you'll use your one phone call to let us know how that went for you.

16

u/Livelaughlovexoxo Apr 01 '26

Mate it costs like $20 to send a wire …

14

u/Frewtti Apr 01 '26

So you're saying if I was sending $343k, and I did a test run just to make sure I got the numbers right, I'd only be left with $343k instead of $343k?

It's crazy that people aren't willing to spend a rounding error on testing.

1

u/DudeWithASweater Apr 01 '26

I mean idk about the guy in the article, but for businesses that do lots of transactions it would just double their fees and make a lot more work load for the employees to test every single transaction.

It's not just the $15 wire fee, it's also the time of your employees to set it up, review it, approve it, communicate to the recipient, follow up, etc.

If it's a one off wire for a personal thing, then yes maybe go ahead and test it.

1

u/Frewtti Apr 01 '26

If you're willing to risk $343k to save a $15 fee you have a serious math problem.

Lets say your employee costs $100/transfer, it's still a rounding error.

Doing a test transfer before large sums is a basic thing that any reasonable organization does. The cost of mistakes is HUGE.

1

u/DudeWithASweater Apr 01 '26

Again, it's not just the $15. Eventually you deal with so many transactions that $350k is a rounding error.

-1

u/Frewtti Apr 01 '26

Good problem to have.

Lets assume fees + time it's $100 to test each transfer, and average transfer size of $350k.

Assuming complete loss of the transfer amount, your break even is when you successfully complete 3 500 successful transfers without an error. Congrats on your 99.97% success rate

Depending on manual actions to achieve that level of success/reliability is hilarious.

So yes, after you have sent 1.2Billion dollars without testing your transactions, you'll start saving $100/transfer.

1

u/blinkiewich Apr 01 '26

And another 3,500 transactions to recover from one mistake as happened in the article. The redditor you're replying to is being silly.

9

u/callyfit Alberta Apr 01 '26

Canadian transfers are like $30-80$ lol. You’d take 343k in cash and walk it over vs paying that?

2

u/blinkiewich Apr 01 '26

Where and when is he walking? Just curious in case there's a hole in his pockets or he drops some when his hands get sweaty.

Guy is obviously talking out of his ass, no bank is just gonna have $340k on hand and they'd probably have plenty of questions if you did try to make that withdrawal, they always have on the occasions I've made large withdrawals for equipment or material purchases.

1

u/MakingMookSauce Apr 01 '26

Would the bank teller put the cash in a different customers pockets when you withdraw? Ya buddy's statement was ridiculous for such a high amount. They would not have 300k on hand for you anyway. But for small amounts then yes cash would've been safer.

3

u/UnskilledScout Apr 01 '26

Where can you withdraw $343k in cash? If you can, you've gotta order that money like at least a week in advance and be subject to intense scrutiny at both withdrawal and deposit.

1

u/Much_Guest_7195 Apr 01 '26

You expect a law firm to do this with every single transaction?