14 DAY TRIAL // The Interpol is on the lookout for an Asian couple who fled New Zealand after causing a prejudice of NZ$6 million (over 3.6 million USD) to Westpac Bank. The financial institution erroneously poured NZ$10 million into the couple's account after they applied for a NZ$10,000 overdraft.
Huan Di Zhang and Hui Gao were running the BP Barnetts service station in Rotorua, New Zealand. Pressed by financial problems and debts to creditors, the pair applied for a loan of $10,000 with Westpac Bank. It is yet not clear why the bank ended up giving them 1,000 times more, but they were not shy to take the money, or at least a large part of it, and run.
NZ's Stuff news outlet reports that a police investigation was started at the bank's request, which maintains that the incident represents theft. The bank has also launched an internal audit to determine the exact circumstances that led to this situation. Meanwhile, the police believe that the couple might be in China, reason for which an officer has been sent to the Asian country to track them down.
Both bank and police spokespersons refused to disclose the exact sum of money, but inside sources speak of a $6 million loss, $4 million being already recovered. "I can say that Westpac is pursuing vigorous criminal and civil action to recover a sum of money stolen," Craig Dowling, Westpac's media relations manager, has confirmed for Stuff.
According to the legislation, regardless of whether the pair used documents to take advantage of bank employees or not, the act of spending money obtained accidentally is a criminal offense, as long as they knew it didn't belong to them. Obviously, if caught, it would be extremely hard for the pair to argue in front of a judge that they didn't realize they weren't entitled to such a large sum of money.
"Payment by mistake" incidents are rather uncommon and even more uncommon is for them to involve millions of dollars. In January this year, another couple from Pennsylvania were arrested and charged with theft after spending $177,250 they received into their account due to a banking error. The two argued that they thought the money were a gift from God and said they gave away a lot of it to charities.
The authorities in New Zealand have asked the Interpol to help find the missing Asian couple and are fairly positive that, eventually, they will soon be brought to justice.