The Invisible Windfall
EthicsComments
This is similar to how some lost and found laws work. If you make a reasonable effort to find the owner and fail, the law often lets you keep the item, treating the outcome as a legitimate windfall.
I disagree with the parallel to lost and found laws. In a bank error, the owner is known and identified (the corporation), which removes the reasonable effort justification used in finders keepers scenarios.
the corporation is still the legal victim regardless of whether they feel the loss.
I have seen people try this with payroll errors in local government. The audit always catches it eventually, and then you are paying it back with interest or facing a fraud charge.
Greta's point actually highlights a positive: the existence of rigorous auditing ensures that systemic errors are eventually corrected, preventing long term balance sheet drift.
This mirrors several unjust enrichment cases from the last decade. In many jurisdictions, the burden of proof for criminal intent is so high that a simple clerical error often fails to meet the legal threshold for theft.
The post ignores the Terms of Service agreement. Most bank contracts explicitly state that the bank can reverse any erroneous credit without notice, which makes the choice to keep the money an illusion.
If the bank has the right to reverse it but lacks the operational capacity to track the error, does the act of spending it become the primary ethical breach rather than the act of receiving it?