A homeless man was able to withdraw over $37,000 from a Maine ATM after the machine accidentally kept spitting money at him. According to WGME-TV, police received a phone call around 1 a.m. about a transient sleeping inside a TD Bank next to the ATM.
Police asked the homeless man to leave but the guy returned a few hours later. Around 5:30 a.m., a woman called the cops because she said a man was taking a really long time at the ATM, the station reports.
When officers arrived at the bank they noticed the same homeless man was stuffing money into a plastic bag. According to WGME-TV, police said the man was trying to fill his bag with over $37,000 after only requesting $140 from his TD Bank account. The money was returned to the bank.
"He was using his bank card to request more money, yes," Lieutenant Todd Bernard told the station.
TD Bank told officers that they would not be pressing charges against the unnamed homeless man and that the glitch was due to a "code error." The bank also said that customers' accounts were not affected by the glitch.
"I think that's really nice of [the bank], and I think it's the right thing to do," resident Sarah Howard said. "Obviously he was kind of tricking the system a little bit. But it was partially their fault for not having the right security on it."
"If the bank was giving it, he wasn't stealing it," another resident, Marcia Giancola said. "He was just playing the slot machine, so to speak."
Earlier in the week, the federal government issued a warning to banks that thieves were targeting ATM machines and had figured out a way to withdraw large sums of money.
"Hackers are installing malware on bank computer networks and changing ATM settings to withdraw more money than you even have in your account. In one case, thieves hacked into just 12 accounts and managed to withdraw $40 million," "Good Morning America (via AOL) reported.
It's not clear if the two incidents are connected.
