Ditto.
Had this happen about a year ago - in a drive through bank. By the time I realized the guy in front left his card, he was long gone. I simply waited and let the machine suck the card in.
Granted, the evil Satan on my left shoulder wanted to suck a few hundred out, but the good Angel on my right shoulder told me that was wrong on so many levels that the idea passed quickly.
Surprisingly, it doesn’t take all that long for the machine to suck that card in and only took a minute or less before I was able to use the machine using my own card.
I’d never touch a dime. If I could return it, I would. Or turn it into the bank.
Or I’d cut it up ("…why thats just plain MEAN!" -James Coburn).
I have an over developed sense of Ethics. I truly do my best to always do what I feel is right, regardless of the consequences… and I can’t be bought.
Boring True Story which some people will no doubt nit-pick to say has nothing to do with honesty, ethics or theft. (feel free to skip) [spoiler]
When I was 10, all I wanted was a 10-speed bike. My friends all had them, it was how everyone my age got around by me and it was not only a status symbol but a badge of freedom. Christmas morning that year, I found a blue 10-speed under the tree. I was ecstatic! I couldn’t wait to ride it, ice & snow & breakfast & getting out of pajamas be damned. But I did wait…and wait…until in February there was a warm day.
I drove around the town, learning the sounds of the gears as I shifted. As I was riding down a side street, the shifter was making a funny clicking sound. I looked down & jiggled the shifter until it went away. I looked up to find myself doing 20MPH and 24 inches away from the back of a parked Buick.
I hit like a snowball hitting a tree, face-planting into the the back of the car & crumpling the frame of my bike. There I was cold, wet, bleeding, and with my bike totaled, listening to the cold February wind and looking up into the gray sky (I’ve learned to Hate gray skies). I got up, and I picked up my bike and started to limp to the sidewalk when I thought “What about this car? Somebody owns it. It has a small dent in the back now, even if the blood washes off. I need to find who owns it.”
And I dragged the crumpled bike with me as I climbed the walk to the house it was in front of & rang the bell. But it wasn’t their car. Same with the second house. By the third house , my leg was really starting to hurt. And thats when I found the owner of the car. They called my parents, who came & got me. And two weeks later, my father got a bill for the repair of the dent on the car.
My father was livid, but he didn’t punish me (Dad was a Hell of a great guy, born to the Atticus Finch style of American, which is all but extinct today). I did hear him talking about it with one of his best friends though.
“Honest to God, how can I punish him? He was honest & he told the truth.”
I never did get another 10 speed as a present though. Instead, he had me cut lawns and do odd jobs to save money for a new bike. And when I had enough money for a new bike, he made me use all of it to buy a beat-up used one from EBS worthless husband. “They’re family. And they need the money.” But that’s another story…
[/spoiler]
Taking money wouldn’t even come to mind, even if I needed it badly.
Yeah, the main reason why I said I wouldn’t necessarily return the card is that by the time the original owner gets it back from the bank, they most likely already canceled it, so now the card is a worthless lump of plastic. If I was the person who left it and a stranger returned it to me, I might still cancel the card even though no money is missing just because it seems safest.
99% of ATMs I’ve used make you take your card back before getting cash out. You can still leave your card if you do other transactions, though.
I always assume theres a camera, even if there wasn’t I’d return the card.
I’m curious who the 4 people are who said they would take something. Any of the thieves want to reveal themselves?
Of course I wouldn’t take anything. This shouldn’t even be a question. I once found someone’s paycheck on the ground (for $1000) and I mailed it back to the company it was sent from.
I took an engineering ethics class in College. The very first thing the instructor said (oddly enough) was:
Makes you think about breaking the law over piddly shit, that’s for sure.
My experience with less than law abiding citizens is that they may be smart or stupid, but a lot of them screw up in ways they had no CLUE they’d screwed up. Murphy’s law and all that.
3rd: Life sure is easy when you don’t lie. Lies compound exponentially. If you don’t lie, you don’t have to keep track.
Combine those three things and I’d:
- return it to the bank. If that wasn’t practical, I’d
- Shred it.
I walked back up to an ATM and had just enough time to wonder why it was beeping, when it sucked somebody’s card back in, so I didn’t have the time to be tempted, but deep in my heart of harts, I wouldn’t have taken any money from their account.
I was on the other end, sort of, a couple weeks ago. I bought some groceries, went through the self-serve checkout, paying with a debit card. I asked for $10 cashback (which I do about twice a year), got distracted, and left the money in the tray. Whoever was next would have had ten bucks cash and absolutely no way to trace whose it was. In that case I think I’d pocket it rather than turn it in to the store.
I wouldn’t steal. I’ve been stolen from and didn’t care for it at all. Not cool.
I’d take the card and return it to the institution that issued it.
Honestly, I would. I always return overages in change I am given, too…I know that’s going to come right out of the pocket of the low-paid employee who screwed up. I don’t need the extra money that badly (even when I actually DO!)
ETA, who says you need religion to be ethical? I’d do all this whether or NOT I thought a camera or a god was watching me. 
So you tried to use someone else’s card without their permission, several times. That’s called fraud.
And your face and actions were recorded along with a time stamp. Real smart.
Take out the card and return it to the bank my earliest opportunity. This really wasn’t a hard question; it’s the right thing to do.
None of our machines take deposits anymore. 
I would think someone with a microphone was waiting just outside of view and someone else would be filming from a distance.
I would not want to be shown a thief on some stupid “What would you do?” news show segments. It’s just not worth the money.
Ha! That would be tempting. And genuinely unsettling for the recipient - I know I keep a pretty close eye on my balance, and money popping in out of nowhere would trouble me. But it’s hard to feel too bad about a prank that leaves your victim $20 richer. 
Wasn’t there a poster here whose (at the time) girlfriend had this happen and she cleaned the ATM owner’s account out? She called it a “stupidity tax”.
I would definitely not take any money.
However, I’m not sure I’d try to return it. What if some previous asshole came across the same thing I did and decided to take some money from the account and left it in the ATM, where I found it? If I return the card and the owner complains that $300 is missing, could I be in trouble if they think I may have taken the $300 before returning it?
Doing that to some random stranger is an incredibly shitty thing to do; even in my desperate straits, I’d rather rob a convenience store than take money that way. And I’d turn the card in to the bank where the ATM is, if possible.
However, I’ll make one exception. If the card doesn’t belong to a random stranger, but to a specific stranger who has revealed himself to be an incredible douche, I’d weigh the odds. Being the agent of karma doesn’t have to be a non-profit gig.
“Other” in the sense that I have some ethics (and would also assume that I would be seen on a security camera) but they only go so far. If I was at an open bank I would take it in to the bank. However, unless I was in a really good mood (highly unusual:D) if I wasn’t at an open bank I would probably just take the card out of the machine and leave it where it would be found (after all, if it is out of the machine someone would need a PIN to do something with it). Too much like hard work trying to return it to the [del]idiot[/del] person that forgot it.
(About intentionally entering a hopefully bogus PIN)
I’d call that white-hat activity. It’s technically fraudulent activity, but they’re actually trying to make the machine swallow the card, rather than trying to use the card.
Their other option would be to take possession of the card and either drop it in the bank’s night deposit slot, or take it home and call the issuing bank so the bank can deactivate the card.
Given the number of ways a Visa or MasterCard-branded debit card can be used without a PIN or signature, doing anything they can to make the bank take possession of the card is certainly the preferable course of action.
I certainly wouldn’t steal money from anyone. I wouldn’t feel any obligation to return the card either though - if the ATM is at a branch that’s open, I’d give it to a teller, otherwise I’d either wait for the ATM to keep it or take it and run it through the shredder at home. It’s not like banks won’t replace a lost card.
I’d call the bank’s emergency contact number that is usually posted on or near the ATM nowadays (due to skimming scams). They’d probably tell me to drop the card into the bank’s mail slot (but I’d call first because I’d be on a video tape so I want it to be on record that I disclosed having the card, just in case the race condition between the card owner’s complaint and investigation of the video, and the owner being notified of the card having been found in the bank’s mail box, should temporarily resolve in my disfavour.
That’s the practical answer. The moral answer: no, I am not a thief.