Russel Alexander, a 54-year-old Briton, was the victim of a banking error that turned his life upside down. Leading him to believe he had inherited a large sum of money from a distant relative, Bungling Barclays bank wrongly paid thousands of pounds into the Briton’s account.
In order to be on the safe side, Russel first wanted to verify that it was not a mistake. But everything seemed fine because he was told that these funds were indeed his. Russel therefore had fun buying a house to renovate.
In reality, it later turned out to be a mistake. The bank therefore decided to withdraw the money from Russel’s account. In the meantime, Russel had bought a house worth over half a million pounds if renovated, but he was unable to do so as he suffered health problems. “I had worked for the bank for over 40 years and when I asked for the money for the renovation they said it was up to me to spend it. I had planned to renovate the property, which cost me 250,000 pounds (288,861.25 euros), to live there and then use it to rent it out to vacationers, ”explains Russel in the columns of the Sun.
“But now my future is completely uncertain. I have no money and a half-finished property. I would never have gotten into this if I had known the money wasn’t mine,” he says.
For its part, the bank gave an explanation to Russel. “We are sorry to learn of this customer’s experience. It is evident that the sender of the funds selected the wrong recipient from his payee list when he completed the online payment instructions. Unfortunately, when the recipient received unexpected funds received in their account, they were wrongly informed that they could keep the funds. Subsequently, the funds were withdrawn from his account after a complaint from the original sender. However, due to our errors, an additional 6,000 books received were mistakenly deleted. This was returned to the customer,” the bank said.