‘I became an instant millionaire when I woke up to find £8.9m in my account’

A teenager became an overnight millionaire when £8.9m was mistakenly paid into his account.

Dane Gillespie, 18, had cashed an £8,900 cheque from his grandmother into his Nationwide account.

But instead the teen woke to find he was a multi millionaire – at least for a few hours before the error was corrected.

His mum Caroline, from Belfast, was shocked when she was sent a screenshot of the balance on Wednesday morning (September 13) reports The Mirror.

She said: “We couldn’t believe it.

READ MORE: Elderly couple ‘ruined’ by 30-year-old banking error

“My son thought he was a millionaire for a few hours.

“It’s as well he told us and didn’t go and blow it all.”

His mum said that Dane was “gonna order a Porsche” before she warned him the money wasn’t theirs and they needed to get the error corrected.

And the Belfast Met student’s millionaire bank balance only lasted a few hours before the bank – at Donegall Place – issued a correction.

His mum added that he’d “thought all his birthdays came at once”.

Express.co.uk has approached Nationwide for a comment.

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Money expert Martin Lane wrote about these kinds of issues in Money – and the news probably isn’t what account holders want to hear if they have an unexpected windfall caused by a banking error.

He said: “There’s plenty of ways you can end up with an accidental windfall in your current account, whether it’s a banking error, an incorrect tax rebate, or even an overpayment from your employer. 

“It sounds like a dream come true, but can you keep the cash?

“In a nutshell, no. Legally, if a sum of money is accidentally paid into your bank or savings account and you know it doesn’t belong to you, then you must pay it back.”

He goes on to say that keeping any money wrongly credited to an account could lead to being charged with ‘retaining wrongful credit’ under the Theft Act 1968.

And that account holders could be guilty of an offence if a wrongful credit is made to your account and you know the credit has been made incorrectly and you don’t take steps to cancel the credit.

He says that a woman from Blackburn was sentenced to 10 months in prison after she went on a spending spree, after receiving £135,000 in error from Abbey bank.

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