Money accidently transferred to wrong account

He was given an IBAN number but when the money did not later show up in his bank account he contacted the bank again. It was then discovered he had been incorrectly given the details of McDonnell’s account.

The €51,808 had dropped into her account on March 6th. The following day she withdrew €5,000. Over the next nine days she spent large amounts in Dunnes Stores, Tesco, Heatons, Centra. Lifestyle Sports, Shoe Rack and New Look.

On discovering its mistake the bank took back the €26,862 remaining from the original deposit. They also wrote to McDonnell asking her to repay the rest but she ignored the letter.

How did the bank just take the money back? I thought that they were not allowed to?
 
Thanks everyone. To clarify on background. PTSB set up an IBAN which I requested. I transferred a sum and this went through correctly. I needed to do a second transfer and I clicked on the payee on my bank app. For axreason I can't explain, when I clicked on the payee link in the app, I was linked to an old payee IBAN I had used a few years previously. My error I should have double checked before I made the transfer but I didn't and the money got sent to the old payee IBAN. When I recognised the error I contacted PTSB, they recreated the correct IBAN and this subsequently worked fine. They did the recall for the incorrect transfer and it got rejected. The old IBAN was set up a number of years back and it did not have a payee name. I have the IBAN number but no name. I did mention to guards but they are saying that as I authorised the transfer, there is no criminality.
 
So you transferred
PaulJay said:
The old IBAN was set up a number of years back and it did not have a payee name. I have the IBAN number but no name.
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To your knowledge this second IBAN a PTSB account or not?

If you're not sure, what are the first eight characters of the IBAN?
 
Did you google the old iban ? If it's a bill you paid it might come up on a seach so you could find out who it is? Or search your payment history it might ring a bell if you could see when you paid it before. No idea if how recalls work but if its an old account maybe the owner no longer uses it or if a business maybe the recall message is not in the correct hands. 
 
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I suspect you may have to get a court order to get the bank to give you the account holder's details, due to privacy regulations etc. Then you can take a legal case against the receiving account holder.
(I don't have any special knowledge in this matter however. )
 
I had a similar experience myself in the last month with BOI app..money went to the incorrect person even though I had selected the correct supplier.. I can’t explain either how it happened as I’ve been paying suppliers for years using this method. There was a IT outage at BOI at the time of execution. I was informed by the boi to contact the supplier to ask them to do a charge back which they completed that day…to say I was grateful would be a complete understatement. I hadn’t used this supplier in 3 years. BOI did inform me that they would send me forms to request a formal charge back if the supplier did not cooperate…was told this process would take weeks to complete. I removed all persons/suppliers from my boi app in case this might occur again.FYI correct account was number 2 in my list, other account was 17 in my list and names of each company completely different so not a case of fat fingers!!
 
Thanks again for all your feedback. What Bluefin references is a carbon copy of what happened in my case. I am not certain of exact dates when I previously used the old IBAN (as the banking app doesnt appear to have this function - I will try to check transfer history on laptop when I get an opportunity). However the year when I used the old IBAN was 2019 as transfers to other IBAN numbers (which I remember) are after this one on my app. The only connection between the 2 IBANs is that they are both BOI a/c. Again I agree I should have double checked, agree also, I need to clean up app and remove these old IBAN s but when I click on the right payee, I did not even consider that the transfer would go to the wrong a/c
 
To add to this I was only aware that the money was transferred to the incorrect account when the action was completed…even though I had selected the correct account…was completely bizarre what happened and I work in the IT World..the only thing was I used my phone and not my laptop..shouldn’t make a difference I know..

Other thing to note I wasn’t able to transfer money to my daughters account at the same time…BOI were having IT problems at that time!!
 
Bluefin said:
the only thing was I used my phone and not my laptop..shouldn’t make a difference I know..
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I would think it would be a lot easier to make a mistake on a phone than on a much bigger laptop.

I only ever use my laptop to make payments. I am with AIB. I checked just now with making a payment via my phone. It's straightforward enough but it's almost too easy. On the laptop, there are more steps. It would be much harder to pick a wrong payee.

Brendan
 
Thanks again all. To confirm, I selected the right payee on the phone app, I am fully certain of this. It was the last payee on my list and in order to have selected the wrong payee, I would have needed to scroll through the list to find it. However just before the transfer goes through you are requested to confirm the transfer and this is where I made an error in not double checking the IBAN numbers. I will contact BOI tomorrow and try to establish why the recall from PTSB was rejected.
 
Yes, I will explain exactly what happened in my incidence and if there could be an issue on their side which contributed to the transfer problem. I started out this thread to understand if there was any way I could retrieve my money, but now I would like to also get to the root cause to prevent this for happening to anyone else. Again happy to acknowledge that I should have checked the IBAN when asked to confirm, but when you select a payee, you expect it to work correctly
 
PaulJay said:
I selected the right payee on the phone app, I am fully certain of this.
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That just does not sound right. You selected Brendan Burgess and they used Sue Ellen's IBAN?

By all means ask BoI if their IT problem could have caused this.

But unless there are many other similar cases, everyone will assume you got distracted and made a user error.

If I had paid Sue Ellen last month and was paying her again this month, I would not check the IBAN.

Did you do a search on your PC for that IBAN? It might well be on some document from when it was an active Payee.

Ask BoI for all payments to that payee over the last 6 years. Then you will be able to identify the person.

Brendan
 
Yes, i know it sounds surreal but that's what happened, understand I am repeating myself, but on the PTSB app after you select your payee, you are then requested to confirm and this is where I should have noticed that (to use your example) I selected Brendan but the money was actually going to Sue Ellen. I am pretty certain that I only transferred funds once a few years back to that IBAN, but I will ask BOI if they can clarify this along with why the recall from PTSB was rejected by BOI.
 
The six digits after "BOFI" in the IBAN are the sort code, https://www.irelandbankcodes.com/ will tell you the branch. How helpful that will be who knows.

Another thing to do is search your email and if possible texts for the IBAN. You got the IBAN from someone or some website, so you could still have that record.

Your bank should also be able to tell you how much you sent and the last time you used it. The amount could help you remember. (Tradespeople often use bank transfers - that would be my guess if I saw an IBAN I couldn't identify in my list)

As for the recall, my guess is it can only be recalled for certain explicit reasons - and sending to the wrong IBAN may not be one (even if due to a glitch on the app). Banks have to wash their hands of the transaction beyond some point or else they'll become the middlemen for all sorts of change-of-mind reasons people want to get their money back.

(There's a good chance the money will be sent back to you by whoever received it - eventually - it's not gone to some completely random bank account - it's gone to someone you previously trusted for some other transactions)
 
There is a bug in BOI's Banking 365 system which allows you to get at least part of another BOI's account name.
When you make a payment into another BOI account your statement will show '365 Online' plus the actual account name up to the 20th Character. Not the account name you had setup to make the payment into. eg '365 Online xxxxxx xxx'

I call it a GDPR issue and has been this way for decades...
 
Leo said:
How is it a GDPR issue?
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Imagine walking into a bank with only an account number and asking for the first name of the owner. They'd almost certainly refuse - probably even before GPDR.

Based on what Towger says, if the OP has access to a BOI account or knows someone who has they could send 1 cent to the account and possibly reveal the first name of the account owner.
 
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