A man bought a house with £110,000 that appeared in his bank account – but now they want it back.
Gatekeepers News reports that Russell Alexander was wrongly advised he could keep the money and even bought a house.
Alexander, aged 54, from the East of England, said he has been left living in a semi-derelict home.
So he bought a £237,500 doer-upper new home.
He was wrongly informed by Barclays that the money was from an inheritance and it was his to keep.
It came after a stranger deposited the mystery lump sum.
However, in a shock development after nine months, the high street bank realised their error.
The bank has admitted the money was transferred by another sender in error.
He said: “I’ve been a loyal customer for 40 years and they clearly told me twice the money was mine to spend.
He continued: “I planned to renovate the house to rent out rooms on Airbnb, but I’ll need to work now to earn the money and it will take years.
“I never would have bought it if I didn’t have the extra money.
“Barclays have stolen my future plans and left me living like a stowaway.”
He said: “It made no sense to me when the money just arrived, but I checked with the bank twice and with an accountant – they all said spend it.
“I pulled the house to bits and planned to use the money to do it up, but now they’ve taken it back and I have to live in one room of a derelict house.
“I’ve had sleepless nights over this for weeks. I don’t know what the matter is with Barclays. This is no way to run a bank.
“I’m disgusted that this is how they treat their loyal customers.
“After giving me nine months of false hope their £500 compensation is a total insult.
“They make billions of pounds a year. It’s been sat there nine months and they said if I’d spent it they couldn’t do anything, but because I didn’t they’ve just taken it back.”
Barclays said: “We’re sorry to hear about this customer’s experience.
“It is evident that the sender of the funds had selected the incorrect intended recipient from their payee list when completing the online payment instructions.
“There is a verification page displayed to allow the customers to check that the details entered online are valid and correct before proceeding to confirm the payment is to be made.
“Unfortunately, when the recipient sought clarity regarding the unexpected funds being received in his account, he was incorrectly advised that he could keep the funds.
“Subsequently the funds were removed from the account following a claim from the original sender.
“However due to our error an additional £6,000 above the intended sum received was incorrectly removed. This will be returned to our customer together with lost interest.”
Culled from Birmingham Mail
