Calling all lawyers...

ansbaradigeidfran

Just looking for some lay advice here, but if you know what you're talking about then it'll be even better.

A friend of mine unexpectedly received a four figure amount by wire transfer from a company that she left five years ago. A summary letter was sent by the bank, stating that the wire transfer was for payment of "Mr X Jones' expense account", so "Miss X Jones" here probably isn't the intended recipient. The company in question has been taken over, and she doesn't have any contact details for them. Likewise, the company probably doesn't have any up-to-date details for her other than the bank account.

So how do you think she should play this? Is the Unsolicited Goods Act applicable? Is the company in breach of the Data Protection Act in keeping (at least) her bank details for this long?

always_tyred

Clearly your friend should buy a new bike as soon as possible.

il_principe

ansbaradigeidfran wrote:

Just looking for some lay advice here, but if you know what you're talking about then it'll be even better.

A friend of mine unexpectedly received a four figure amount by wire transfer from a company that she left five years ago. A summary letter was sent by the bank, stating that the wire transfer was for payment of "Mr X Jones' expense account", so "Miss X Jones" here probably isn't the intended recipient. The company in question has been taken over, and she doesn't have any contact details for them. Likewise, the company probably doesn't have any up-to-date details for her other than the bank account.

So how do you think she should play this? Is the Unsolicited Goods Act applicable? Is the company in breach of the Data Protection Act in keeping (at least) her bank details for this long?

Well I know what I'd do - not sure it's legal though...

greg66_tri_v2.0

It's not her money; she knows it's not her money. How's that going to look if the company wakes up and tracks her down? (clue: r-e-a-l-l-y b-a-d. For her).

Even if her former employer has been taken over, it should take no more than, oh, 5 minutes on the internet to find out the address of the acquiring company. If that fails, she could ring her bank to establish the identity of the payer and track down contact details from there.

I don't practise criminal law, and no doubt spen666 will say if I'm wrong, but I'd have thought that if she retains it she runs the risk of a criminal charge. And she certainly runs the risk of a civil claim to recover the money. Tell her to return it.

linsen

good call G66, I would do the same

itboffin

It's a sad fact but true she shouldn't spend the money, I'm not saying give it back just yet perhaps put it to one side and wait.

Greg T

itboffin wrote:

It's a sad fact but true she shouldn't spend the money, I'm not saying give it back just yet perhaps put it to one side and wait.

Put the money into a high interest account and wait for the "call"

If you can find a "high interest account"

in fact you can put it in here

SC 40-16-59

Acc no 465132789

name Gregski Trotsky

It pays out at 10% - which I think you'll agree is great value. In fact I'll open this to the floor - just stick your cash in that acct, PM me the bin you want me to dump your "return" in- enclosed in a brown paper bag and at what time and we'll all be rich.

Polar Bear

Fraid the money has to go back. It aint hers and keeping it is pure and simple theft.

It would be sensible to try and contact them, even via the bank whereby the transfer originated.

chaley

I would of thought that the moneys have to go back , but I would have thought that if you have to find who sent the money, then it would start to cost the sender for you time, £50 per hour or part there of sounds about right to me. Oh and then of course there would be a storage costs as well They could always write to the sender and ask for them to remove the said items (money) for their property (account) within 5 working days or they will be disposed of (spent on a new bike)
Hope this helps, if not I bake a mean cake, do you think they would like file or hacksaw flavour??
Chaley

DonDaddyD

No one wants to give free money back - but there is no such thing as free money.

In this situation I would get actual (off the record - face2face) legal avice.

However:

If a pair of Fulcrums were sent to my address but were addressed to someone else and left on my doorstep (I didn't sign for them or anything). Then I never received such a package, but my bike would roll a lot faster on a pair of Fulcrums.

spen666

I AAL ( Yes- I AM A LAWYER)


I would advise your *ahem* friend to do nothing, save perhaps move the money into an interest bearing account at the same bank.

She is under no obligation to take active steps to send the money back. The money however is not hers to retain. however, if after 6 years ( in England & Wales) the company have not reclaimed the money, then it would I believe be hers under civil law.

To do this is different from simply keeping and spending the money now, which is probably a dishonesty offence.

DonDaddyD

spen666 wrote:

I AAL ( Yes- I AM A LAWYER)


I would advise your *ahem* friend to do nothing, save perhaps move the money into an interest bearing account at the same bank.

She is under no obligation to take active steps to send the money back. The money however is not hers to retain. however, if after 6 years ( in England & Wales) the company have not reclaimed the money, then it would I believe be hers under civil law.

To do this is different from simply keeping and spending the money now, which is probably a dishonesty offence.

Many Lawyer's and Solicitors on this site.

What type of Law do you practice.

spen666

BTW

The advice above is not necessarily agreed with by my criminal lawyer colleagues

greg66_tri_v2.0

spen666 wrote:

I however, if after 6 years ( in England & Wales) the company have not reclaimed the money, then it would I believe be hers under civil law.

Ummm. Maybe. If money is paid under a mistake of fact, limitation runs from the time when the payer discovered, or could have discovered with reasonable diligence, his mistake. How this ties in with the general rule under a restitutionary claim (that the cause of action arises upon overpayment) is not wholly clear.

il_principe

DonDaddyD wrote:

Many Lawyer's and Solicitors on this site.

What type of Law do you practice.

Sods law I think.

greg66_tri_v2.0

spen666 wrote:

BTW

The advice above is not necessarily agreed with by my criminal lawyer colleagues

Which bit of the advice?

cee

I know someone who got an unexpected payment into their account from the bank itself.

They spent it....got into loads of trouble, and eventually had to pay it back.

Something about having no reasonable grounds to expect the cash to go into their account.

I would also make sure the cash was bearing interest in the meantime, (obviously just to keep it separate from the person own money.....wouldn't want to get mixed up would we ) and then when they eventually cotton on, they can have the cash back.

beegee

transfer it to a euro account and watch it grow.

spen666

jashburnham wrote:

DonDaddyD wrote:

Many Lawyer's and Solicitors on this site.

What type of Law do you practice.

Sods law I think.

and a few others

I don't need to practice now as I am perfect at it


I work in the field of Criminal Law - I could say I am a criminal lawyer (but as yet have not been found guilty)

blackworx

IANAL, but the following is from my experience dealing with overpayments of a similar size.

Once the funds have cleared there is no way the bank can reverse the transaction without your friend's permission.

The company will be looking for the money pretty soon, so there's no real option of trying to hang on to it until no one's looking for it any more. This is not necessarily because the company will have discovered the error for themselves, but because someone somewhere is going to be chasing them for £4k and it will be an easy job for them to tell where it went. It would be best for your friend if he/she got in touch with the company rather than it having to happen the other way around.

The probable outcome hinges on whether or not your friend could claim to have received (and perhaps spent) the money in good faith. The amount of cash, plus the fact that remittance advice was provided means your friend would never be able to claim good faith, so it is inevitable that the money will have to be paid back at some point. The possibility of errors like this one is one of the main reasons remittance advice letters get sent out.

Either way, afaik it's a civil matter so your friend can't really get into "big trouble" over it, but it's still best to avoid court at all costs. My manager says he has heard of people having to take out loans to cover lump sum repayments when they've spent the money in question then subsequently tried - and failed - to argue good faith.

But... In my experience the money wouldn't necessarily have to be paid back in a lump sum. If a reasonable repayment offer has been made then it is unlikely your friend will be taken to court over the matter, especially if they have already started making repayments. I think any such case would be thrown out since your friend has shown goodwill in making the offer and commencing repayment, so there would in effect be no case to answer. Only if the repayment offer was unreasonable or if your friend does not make any repayments would they realistically be taken to court to recover the money.

Exactly what "reasonable" means in this context is hard to judge. As a guideline when it happens here we allow a maximum of 12 months for repayment to be made in full before we speak to the legal department. So in effect your friend could treat it as an interest free loan if they so wished.

If it was me, I'd be tempted to combine this with the suggestions of previous posters and stick the cash in a high interest account, repaying it as slowly as possible from there. Reminding the company of their data protection obligations might help as a bargaining chip to smooth over a longer term repayment. Once all the money was repaid I'd hope for a half decent amount to be left over from interest and go buy some new toys. Mind you, with rates as they are it's probably not worth the bother. Your friend might be better off paying back *most* of the money straight away, whilst taking a reasonable (that word again) amount for their inconvenience, remembering of course the data protection angle.

Or they could spend the cash bumming around India for a few years and come back once it all blows over

spen666

blackworx wrote:

....
Either way, afaik it's a civil matter so your friend can't really get into "big trouble" over it, ...

It could also be a theft matter if my prosecutor colleagues are correct.

S5(4) of the Theft Act is their starting point

RufusA

Not to mention section 24A of the Theft Act (ammended) :

24A Dishonestly retaining a wrongful credit
(1) A person is guilty of an offence if—
(a) a wrongful credit has been made to an account kept by him or in respect of which he has any right or interest;
(b) he knows or believes that the credit is wrongful; and
(c) he dishonestly fails to take such steps as are reasonable in the circumstances to secure that the credit is cancelled.
(2) References to a credit are to a credit of an amount of money.

Pretty black and white IMHO, though taken out of context so a "wrongful credit" may have a specific legal meaning, that doesn't apply to this situation!

Rufus.

blackworx

spen666 wrote:

blackworx wrote:

....
Either way, afaik it's a civil matter so your friend can't really get into "big trouble" over it, ...

It could also be a theft matter if my prosecutor colleagues are correct.

S5(4) of the Theft Act is their starting point

I stand corrected

spen666

RufusA wrote:

Not to mention section 24A of the Theft Act (ammended) :

24A Dishonestly retaining a wrongful credit
(1) A person is guilty of an offence if—
(a) a wrongful credit has been made to an account kept by him or in respect of which he has any right or interest;
(b) he knows or believes that the credit is wrongful; and
(c) he dishonestly fails to take such steps as are reasonable in the circumstances to secure that the credit is cancelled.
(2) References to a credit are to a credit of an amount of money.

Pretty black and white IMHO, though taken out of context so a "wrongful credit" may have a specific legal meaning, that doesn't apply to this situation!

Rufus.

Ahh yes- the ammendment following the case of Preddy was it not?

chuckcork

I had a bit over a year ago my last pay from the place I was working paid in twice, due to an error on the part of the secretary of the place I worked sending in the pay advice to the bank twice, who didn't pick it up. Actually everyone in the firm got paid twice!

Sting was that the boss wasn't prompt in telling people, the boss demanded the extra payment back from the bank immediately and then said to the bank it was their problem to trace and chase his employees for the money, one even had left the firm a few weeks before he was paid and was left to find out and deal with hit for himself!

Left a rather bad taste in the mouth, didn't help in my case I was also moving to another country.

My response (on the advice of my former bank manager father, who has also done a bit of work in the line of credit/recollections) was to send a letter to my former employer stating that as far as I was concerned the money had come from him and was his, not his banks, and that any overpayment was in the absence of documentation from his bank his to reclaim. If I hadn't heard from him or his bank (with a letter to back the banks claim to be reclaiming funds overpaid by the employer) then I'd consider it to be an ex-gratia payment for services rendered, a severance package if you will.

Not suprisingly I got a very prompt response from my very recalcitrant former employer followed a few days later with a letter from the bank requesting the funds, and with a letter enclosed authorising the bank to collect it....

DonDaddyD

Is it me or do all Lawyers cycle to work or something (all except my girlfriend).

redvee

I'd chuck it in a high interest account for 6-12 months and wait for the company to claim it. When they do pay up and reap the interest.

The above might have been posted laready but haven't time to read prev posts.

biondino

What is this "high interest account" you're all talking about?

I got a pension rebate of £1600 once which I was pretty sure I shouldn't have got but decided the whole area of pensions contributions was so chaotic that no-one could claim I was dishonestly keeping the cash. To this day a) I have no idea if it was correct and b) no-one ever asked for it back.

lost_in_thought

biondino wrote:

What is this "high interest account" you're all talking about?

I got a pension rebate of £1600 once which I was pretty sure I shouldn't have got but decided the whole area of pensions contributions was so chaotic that no-one could claim I was dishonestly keeping the cash. To this day a) I have no idea if it was correct and b) no-one ever asked for it back.

The high interest account is now an urban legend, mostly due to the eminent Mr Brown and his disregard for those who've been responsible with money.

I once got a double pay from a company I worked for some years ago, they never asked me about it, I kept it. Nothing bad ever came of it.

But I knew the accounting at that company was in chaos, and that they would probably miss it.

greg66_tri_v2.0

What is this thread all of a sudden? A confession box for thieves? :twisted:

lost_in_thought

Yep.... it's always the quiet ones.