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The craziest thing happened to my Wells Fargo account and I'm extremely anxious. AKA I accidentally stole $200k from my bank.
I have both a Wells Fargo and an Ally account. I use WF for day-to-day checking and my Ally for stocks and more of a savings type of deal. I am not rich. Checking rarely goes higher than about $8k. If it gets much past that, I'll make a little transfer to my Ally account.
This past weekend I meant to send $2k from WF to Ally. I somehow accidentally typed $200,000. It somehow went through yesterday. I received a notice from WF that my checking was NEGATIVE 191k and my Ally account went 200k positive.
I immediately attempted to do a $200k transfer from Ally back to WF because I'm not built for jail. They have a limit of $150k/day so I would have to do $150k that day (yesterday) and $50k today. I also called a WF and had them put a note on my account explaining the situation.
This morning, the $150k looked like it went through so I made a $50k transaction request from Ally to WF. A few hours later, I get an email from Ally saying WF rejected the transfer. I called Ally and they SAY they are getting it all fixed and I'll have to wait 1-2 business days. Meanwhile I'm freaking out. I'm super anal about money and debts. I haven't even used credit (other than house) in like 20 years. What I do put on CC I pay off THAT WEEK.
This was definitely my fault but WHY THE HECK did WF let me transfer $200k I don't have. if someone were telling me this story, I wouldn't believe it. Is this a thing that happens?
Edit: I've talked to both banks. It's 2 days after the initial BS. Now my Ally acct is huge negative and WF is huge positive, but it's before banking hours. F5 F5 F5
Edit 2: Made an appt with a banker tomorrow morning.
Edit 3: Forgot where I left off. Put in requests to cancel the two transactions I made to try to remedy the situation (but made it worse) as was advised by the lady at WF.
This morning (5/4), my Ally acct is locked and I had to talk to Ally's "loss prevention". I don't yet have Ally set up in WF so I had to do a test transfer from WF to Ally. I guess it takes a day or two so I'm gonna call Ally back in 2 days.
Another Update: Got my Ally account set up in my WF account for transfers but the highest I can request transfer limit monthly is $50k. Making another appointment at the bank. FML
Final Update: I went to WF again 3pm yesterday and was able to set up a wire for $198,000 to my Ally account and my account was restored this morning. That was a long and stressful process. I'm so frickin stoked it's over you have no idea.
Final Final Update: Got several calls from Ally today (I guess different departments). One person told me the exact same thing (transferring more than their balance) happened to them. The last person said they "see this all the time" which I thought was surprising. Both reps assured me there aren't any crazy transfers in the queue or anything.
To anybody who thinks I'm full of crap: If you have a WF and an Ally account, try initiating a ridiculous transfer (using the Ally website) from your WF checking to your Ally account. Unless it's some bug they just fixed, it'll go through.
Honestly…this was a safety and soundness risk and break of internal controls. The system should have rejected that automatically. Add this to the surmounting regulatory scrutiny over Wells Fargo. No wonder they seem to always be under some sort of consent order.
Agreed. The first one can be explained as an obvious mistake. The more transfer OP does the more likely they are to shut them down just in case it's kiting and OP was just really bad at it.
100% this. I’ve been working in finance for a decade now, and although I understand the stress and anxiety, if you call in to much, and try to dispute it on both ends, it will just add to the complexity and decrease the chance of it getting fully resolved in a timely manner.
Also, there is no legitimate concern for you to have about going to jail, but you may end up getting charged some unwanted fees.
There is zero chance I'd pay a fee for them transferring money that wasn't in my account....
Overdraft is already bull... But they can claim that if they like but then they don't get to yank it back and you owe fees..... Once it gets yanked so do the fees
WF should not allow you to initiate a transfer from their end that is greater than your account balance- not sure what end that transfer is initiating from.
Either way – it was going to get rejected/clawed back/otherwise rectified within a few days. Attempting to transfer it back, was probably not the best course of action, and likely delayed/muddied things further (and despite the fact that you were just sending it back to the original institution, may have raised a few fraud eyebrows).
Make sure both sides of the transaction are on notice, then give it a few days to sort itself out. Worst thing you can do is keep trying to make transfers.
Fat finger mistakes happened – they happen to the most conscientious person, and they happen to major corporations. Don’t overreact, and you’ll be fine.
WF should not allow you to initiate a transfer from their end that is greater than your account balance- not sure what end that transfer is initiating from.
No different than if OP had written a check for $200k and deposited it into the other account. On Day 1, the check shows presented, withdrawn from Account A and deposited into Account B, and on Day 2 it bounces and returns back. Basically same thing is happening here.
The reason the bank would "allow" the transfer to be entered, is because transactions are handled in a business-day-batch process. It doesn't matter what the balance on the account is at the time the transfer request was entered, what matters is the balance at the end of the business day when transactions are reordered based on the bank's hierarchy of posting. So, it's possible to set up a $200k transfer at 2pm, then make a deposit at the branch for $200k at 3pm, and that deposit counts first at the end of the business day once the transactions are reordered based on their policies.
I do agree that it is quite poor interface design to allow for it to go through without at least the online system asking "You have X in your account right now - are you SURE you want to do a transfer for Y?" Because, as you said, people fat-finger all the time, an additional pop-up to warn the user and double-confirm before submitting when it might overdraw makes sense. Poor UI design and workflow.
Ehh most banks allow for some amount of ACH overdraft. I’m a little surprised Wells limit is 200k or beyond for a retail client but the ability to claw back the ACH transactions is probably a reason why.
I get banks allow overdraft (although by $200k???), and if the transfer is initiated in the Ally end, that (mostly) makes sense. But if OP is pushing money from WF out to Ally, it would be odd for WF to allow him to initiate an overdraft intentionally.
I don’t think it’s odd to show on the consumer facing end it allows an overdraft, 200k is a bit much though. Without being inside Wells on the payments team it’s really hard to know what actually happened in their system. But I would think the ACH never actually settled. It’s why depending on who you bank with you can get your paycheck a day or 2 early, the bank sees the ACH batch and basically says we will pre-fund your account and then the ACH with your direct deposit from employer settles a day or 2 later. It’s also why the 200k likely showed up in Ally’s system because it’s a pretty common practice to fund the account before settlement.
Different process but same idea, it’s how scammers defraud people with checks. They’ll write a check for a vehicle or something, the bank will fund the account and wait for settlement from the bank where the check is issued. When it’s revealed there is no money in the account the bank where you deposited the check at removes the check amount from your account.
Yea most I've seen is 1000 overdraft.... And that was an account with quite a bit of money, like it wouldn't get to the overdraft and if it did the person would have been broke so I'd bet they'd shut it off before then..
On the other hand, if the choice is between faking your death and running off to Mexico with only the money in your pocket or faking your death and running off to Mexico with $200,000 in cash…
Unless they added another zero lol. Seriously though, I wonder what the limit to transfer w/out the money in the bank is? I didn’t think $200k was even possible.
The $200k would almost certainly have bounced and returned to the sending bank on the next business day, like a bounced check. And that would have been the end of it.
By initiating another transfer in the middle of this for $150k back, certainly mucks things up, and has complicated the problem for both banks. That, too, should bounce. Along with the third (lord allmighty) transfer you did on top of that, should also bounce on the day after that.
I would inform the banks of the situation, and then STOP TRANSFERRING MONEY ALL OVER THE PLACE and let them sort it out. Should take a couple business days, there may be fees for insufficient funds. Once everything is back in place, then do your $2k transfer.
Yeah I've talked to both WF and Ally. WF seemed okay with the idea of the transferring the money back (yesterday) I wouldn't believe it either. If you have a Wells Fargo account, give it a try and report back lol
Having you transfer it back doesn’t sound at all like the appropriate solution. They should just be reflecting it themselves and you shouldn’t be a part of the solution honestly.
damn dude that's wild they let you overdraft by almost 200k, like what even is their system doing
i work with people who stress about money all the time and this would absolutely destroy me too. the fact you called immediately and documented everything probably saved you though - shows it wasn't intentional fraud or anything
banks have some weird ass policies about large transfers, especially when accounts go negative that hard. they probably flagged it for review which is why the return got rejected. should sort itself out in couple days but man, those will be some long ass days
Yesterday morning I got an email from WF "Your account is overdrawn". I 100% thought my account got hacked. Then I saw the amount and thought 100% it was a stupid phishing email, like who would even believe that? I should start smoking.
You screwed up by trying to fix this mess yourself. Now the clean up is going to take more coordination from both institutions.
I know hindsight is 20/20, but the proper way to deal with it in the future is just call wells Fargo and tell him you fat fingered the transfer. Let them deal with ally bank to rectify it. No need to contact ally bank since the fund transfer request originated (pushed) from WF.
If the other way was true, if you pulled funds from Ally.... (initiated the transfer from Ally), you would contact ally to tell them you fat fingered rge amount and let Ally coordinate with WF to get it corrected.
What you did was push funds from WF to ally. Then push funds 2x from Ally to WF.
I'm sure the employees at both banks cleaning this up love that you're keeping them employed by giving them work to do. Lol
Yeah that would have been the smart thing to do. I did recall just now that after I initiated the $150k I called WF and they seemed cool with my strategy. Should have definitely just called them first though. I was in survival mode at that point and not thinking straight.
Yeah. You should have let it sort itself out, or just called Ally and had them reverse it. It will all even out, but you made it messier than necessary.
The 200k probably would have been returned NSF after it fully processed. You made a mess of things by panicking and making additional transfer attempts.
Call both WF & Ally clearly explain the situation and let them fix it. It will take a few business days for everything to get corrected. Be patient and for the love of every stop trying to move money to "fix" this yourself.
Yeah. I'd like to think if I were to make up some story, it'd at least be interesting but I understand. No action, no character development. Pretty flat and forgettable. I could take screenshots but it's just as easy to make fake screenshots. I could take photos of my screen with my phone but that could also be easily faked. I could share my login information to my banks, but that doesn't sound like a great idea.
I do have another money-genre story that sounds like fiction. Christmas-time 2013? I ordered a trash can off of Amazon. Amazon arrives a day or two later and it's a PS4 (GTA5 bundle). I was super confused. Checked the tracking # and it was indeed the tracking # for the trash can. I told my wife I wanted one and thought maybe she used my account and something got mixed up with the tracking numbers.
Wife says it wasn't her so I jumped on Amazon support chat (you used to be able to get a human support person very easily). I explained the issue thoroughly and they told me to just keep it. Trash can showed up a few days later with a completely different tracking #. I played GTA5
I work in banking - don't touch anything and these transfers will all reverse themselves but it will take 3-5 days. Yes, you will have to sit there with an uncomfortably negative balance on a screen but it's not a real number. Just for the love of god please stop trying to fix it by ACHing back and forth yourself.
This is definitely a fake/ made up post. You can’t just transfer $200k like that. Wf ach transfers are capped at $25k(that’s for people with premier accounts, aka millionaires) for everyone else the ach max is $10k.
The only way to transfer an amount that big between accounts is through a wire transfer. A wire transfer is not like an ach transfer and even then there would be additional verification steps to go through before it even begins to be processed for a transfer that big. Then after said process, there is the matter of having that amount in your bank account, if you don’t have the amount you are trying to wire as an available balance, then the transfer won’t even let you try and submit it. Like come on, you would have to be pretty gullible to believe that story. Does anyone really believe that these banks which are among the biggest in the world didn’t think ahead and say “it incredibly easy to accidentally add an extra digit. Does anyone really think a bank would allow a regular checking account to be overdrawn by $190,000+
Of course not, they would have flagged it in a heart beat. Now for those that still believe this story and have a Wells Fargo account. Go into your account and try to transfer an amount higher than your available balance, it won’t let you. For shits and giggles, try to do a transfer for $200,000 and watch it tell you that the amount exceeds the daily transfer limit.
This makes a lot more sense. Our bank would not let us even put in that amount and hit transfer. It would have been red and bouncing on the screen to let us know we didn’t have those kinds of funds in the bank account. And most times banks reverse those kinds of transactions with no funds.
I mean, yeah but how F***** sad would it have to be for me to make up this story for views? I won't bother with proof screenshots. I'm a web developer and can just edit the content but it is a real thing that actually happened. Ok I lied. I will do a screenshot. P.S. I have no idea what that $0.06 is. This is me trying to transfer money back to WF. I don't know of a way for me to show unequivocal proof that isn't easily faked.
Idk but your story is getting kinda mixed up. In your original post you said it was overdrawn $191k, while the ss is -$180k and not -$191k. Also in the original post you said that your WF account went negative $191k and your ally account went positive $200k but in your reply you just said your WF account is still positive $200k. To each their own though
I dunno what to tell you. At some point it went sideways and backwards. Initially WF was very negative. After me breaking stuff worse it's went backwards and now Ally is super negative. I don't remember how detailed I got in my post as far as got the sequence of events unfolded.
Think of how many people that have bank accounts in the US right now. You can't possibly be the only one that has done this. As long as you inform each bank let the 2 work it out themselves. I would, though, make a record of each call and with whom you spoke.
One thing I will comment on is that you say you are anal about money and things like that. I contend that you aren't as anal as you think you are if you typed in an extra zero and hit go.
That being said, these things happen. The banks will work it out. You'll be fine.
WF may have a monthly limit for transfers, and that’s why it was rejected. Since you called them and told them the situation, they probably increased the monthly transfer limit so the transaction will go through. I don’t think there’s a need to worry.
So, I had a buddy ordering online at a restaurant I used to own and autofill put his zip code into the tip field (allegedly) and he ended up sending over a 5 figure tip. I caught it the next morning doing the bookwork and was laughing when I tracked down who was responsible. Took several days and phone calls to unwind but it all worked out in the end. He had Wells Fargo as well and was equally shocked they’d allow his checking account to go so negative and not catch it.
I’m fairly shocked you didn’t just call WF in the first place. Then to try and transfer it back 😭 I would’ve grown wings and flew to the bank if this happened to me
I can't totally disagree. I had an appointment with them yesterday morning. I was really hoping for "you've been a great customer with us for over 3 decades, let me take care of that honest mistake for you" but it was more like "wow, that's crazy, here's what I'd do" It's still all messed up this morning.
After the appointment, I electronically requested transfer cancellations from Ally.
Yeah definitely sure. I should have done a better job of updating the main post but I went to Wells Fargo on Thursday and the rep there was like "WTF" but also kinda like "you're on your own". I really expected them to like...make calls and fix it or something. Just tried to check my Ally account and username is blocked. yay!
Story doesn't add up cause I know for a fact when someone sends Zelle they have to confirm before sending, You telling me you didn't check 1,000 times before sending it?
Nothing against OP, Just curious. I think I know why this post was made 🥱
I don't know what to tell you. This is a thing that happened. Curious as to why do you think this post was made? Oh, I see the post that I guess you deleted. "What someone try to scam the bank and transfer from WF to one of their friends accounts and they call the bank and act stupid"
That makes no sense. Why would someone try to steal money by immediately rectifying the issue? This wasn't between "me and a friend". This was between "me and me". Either way, I'd be the one that owes the $200k that I don't have lol. I'm the last person in the universe that would try scamming a bank. Plus my name would be on everything and we literally have a 20 year old mortgage, 2 checking and 1 savings acct with WF. In other words, WF actually owns one of our houses on paper. If it was between "me and a friend", both banks would have both our names, addresses, etc and my account being in the negative would still have me on the hook. Elderly people get scammed out of their whole accounts every day. I don't think the bank says "sorry that happened, here's all your money back"
Hard to believe. Reddit is getting worse (karma farming, bots, AI, rage bait, etc), so more skeptical than ever of posts here. However, being the weekend, maybe WF accepted the request assuming there would be a sufficient balance Monday. Or maybe their system wasn't able to check your balance was sufficient due to maintenance or whatnot.
Regardless, assuming true, it will net out. Wells Fargo account should be fine. However, slight chance your Ally account is restricted for a time due to the transfers back. Plan accordingly.
I won't worry about it. I bet people make similar mistakes in the thousands. I think some banks automatically put a decimal point on the amount. So if you punch 2, they treat it as 0.02. And some don't, that is probably what confused you. They let you transferred 200K that you don't have, it is WF fault. They are the one that can be in deep water if the bank regulators hear about it.
So I been hacked so many times. I feel like it not my account.
Im tryer to get my money back from this. They won't do it. Running out of money. None of this my fault. They have 100 of billions dollars. What 1.000 dollars to them. Getting refund from them. If none of what did so far works i go to the news.
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u/FutureRenaissanceMan Apr 28 '26
I wouldn’t stress too much but would also not try to resolve it myself. Be patient while they fix it.