I’m in line for the ATM. There’s three of us. I’m at the end. The lady in front of me is off talking on her mobile, so I move up to use the machine when the first lady is done.
When I look at the machine, there’s 3 fifties sitting in the output slot. I’m thinking about whether she’ll know I’m calling after her if I call after her, or whether she’ll think I knocked off some of her money if I chase after her… a coupple of seconds pass, and I just decide, f**k it, and yell out as loud as I can “MISS”. Thank god she turns around. “you left your money in the machine” She comes and gets it.
Now my question is, after I got to thinking about it, if someone in my situation takes the money… is it stealing? Because it seems that it would be to me. But also I can see how it wouldn’t be. Should it have been returned to the bank if the person before couldn’t be found?
Shouldn’t there be an option to immediately return the money to the person who dropped it in the latter three examples ?. Otherwise the problem is complicated by the peceived likelyhood of the person who lost the money reclaiming it.
The only time I have ever found a twenty pound note lying in the street I returned it, however this was at a shopping centre with a lost property desk. If I found money in a more random location I would not go to the trouble of seeking out the nearest police station.
My actions would also depend on the sum of money involved, I would make far more effort to hand in a large sum of money (£20+) than a small sum of money (say £5).
Hmm, I did not know this. But what a great idea.
I also got reminded of this because a friend of mine got gievn a stolen phone from a friend. Now I woulda started ringing numbers in it, trying to find out who owned to give it back. No, he wiped all the numbers off it. Apparently it’s his now. Just WTF? No it’s not yours, it was STOLEN. ARGH! I am so annoyed with them right nw.
There was a pile of foreign coins on the Coinstar machine in the grocery. I looked around, saw nobody, and pushed them all into my grocery bag. Now I feel guilty, despite the fact that someone obviously left them there because they didn’t want them, and I collect foreign coins.
IANAL, but in a criminal law class I had a while back, I was taught that the major factor in determining criminal liability under common law in these kinds of cases is whether you knew that the money belonged to someone else, or whether you came across it by chance or someone elses mistake.
The example that was taught to me was that, if you were at a quickiemart and bought a coke, the cashier handed over your change, and you quickly counted it and realized he gave you too much, you would be committing theft if you walked away at that point.
However, if you bought the coke, stuffed the change in your pocket, and only realized much later that you had too much money on you, you had not committed theft.
I imagine that if you took the three fifties, that would fall under scenario one, since you stated that it was quite obvious to you at the time that the woman had absentmindedly left her cash behind, then yes, according to what I was taught, it would be theft.
I’m sure a real lawyer will come around soon to let me know if I am mis-remembering what my professor had taught me.
Re: the bills getting sucked back into the machine. This is a great feature because the bank can track that the bills got sucked back in, so when the scatterbrain realizes they’ve left it behind, and call the bank, they have proof that it was done. I know this from fortunate experience.
Re: the stolen phone. If it was someone’s contract phone, chances are that once it’s reported missing, it will be locked out anyway using the ESN of the phone. It’s a likelihood even with some prepaid phones.
Maybe GSM phones (with SIM cards) are different but with my company’s phones, if you try to activate a stolen ESN (when the original owners report it our system black flags the ESN forever) we will seize it.
That happened to me too except the person was already gone and I had no idea who they were. This ATM just dropped the money in an open metal tray and was not designed to take it back after a time. It was $20 and I just kept it. I had no idea where to report it to and I didn’t have time to chase down leads so that was the end of it.
No, therein lies the poorly worded question without real world relevance. In all but one of the scenarios, it would be entirely possible to return the money to the person who dropped it. Aged, able-bodied, whatever. If you see who dropped it, you return it (or I would, anyway.) For number 1, I would indeed pocket it and thank whatever benevolent force was listening. Sooner or later, I’ll drop a 20, and it’ll all even itself out. It’s the Circle of Stupidity.
Telling the family seems irrelevant, and giving it to the police simply means Officer Friendly will pocket it instead of me - there’s no way to track cash and see it gets back to its owner. If Officer Friendly has access to a security tape and was willing to view it with me, I’d be happy to try and figure out who had dropped it and if they were still in the area to attempt a return. If I pocketed it and two minutes later (or a week later, the time span is irrelevant) someone came back to that spot and asked me if I had seen the money they dropped, I’d return it. But otherwise, it’s now mine.
As for the OP, you did exactly the right thing. Yelling and all. I would have been freaked out if some stranger had approached my car at the ATM, but I also would have been pissed if my money was taken. Either yelling or letting the machine suck it back up is the perfect approach.
Are you sure? At many ATMs I’ve used, the money is completely discharged and sits in a relatively open tray. How is it retrieved? An actual vacuum?
I’ve seen ATM cards get sucked back into the ATM when inadvertantly left behind, but they’re never completely discharged from the mechanism. It just rolls back in.
Good point, some machines do do (!) this. Most of the machines I use, however, hold the bills between rollers, which can easily reverse back into the machine.
Just a couple of weeks ago, I went into an ATM as a guys was coming out. Plugged in my protocols and as the machine started making sounds that the money was coming, I looked down and saw a $20 in the trough. It was the previous man’s dough.
I ran to to the door and as he was now driving away, I yelled to “HEY MISTER!!!” but he didn’t hear me.
I wnet back to the machine, got all the money from the trough, then went inside the bank to report the problem. The woman in charge of the ATM really didn’t give a rat’s ass. She said she wouldn’t be able to figure out who lost the money.
Controlling my anger, I offered, “It would be the transaction immediately before mine,” and handed her my ATM card. She dutifully recorded the card number but said the only way the guy could get his money is if he came in to claim it.
Nevertheless, I gave the $20 to that skanky ho, figuring if she wants to steal it, let it be on her conscience. Bad move. Should have left my name for the guy to contact if he ever came back, or put the dough in the poor box. Shit!
Bank of America has bought out this bank (Fleet) and I hope that she gets downsized.
<Anecdotal evidence>
I was just at the mall the other day. I had to grab some cash from the ATM. I walk up, and there’s a hundred bucks sitting in the cash-tray-thing. THere is no one whatsoever around. Hm.
I brought it to the customer service desk, and said, “Uh…hey, this was just sitting in the ATM. Didn’t see anybody there.”
The shrugged, said they’d hang on to it for an hour or so. If no one claimed it by then, they’d let me have it. I have no idea if that’s legal or not. Regardless, no one claimed it, so I took it. But I figure my karma’s fine: I tried to get the authorities to deal with it, they didn’t apparently want to. Plus, I used (most) of that to make a donation to a charity, so…
</Anecdotal evidence>
Not quite. When I was a kid, I found a £5 note in the street. I took it to the police station, and they took my name and address, and put it in a baggie. After 6 months I received a letter saying that nobody had claimed the money, and therefore the money was now mine. I went back to the police station with ID, and claimed my own personal £5 note. That’s an above-board, ethical (and completely pointless) way to be honest about the whole thing.
