Would You Spend 120,000 Dollars if it Landed in Your Bank Account?

Robert and Tiffany Williams live in Montoursville, Pennsylvania. The couple each have their jobs and live an everyday life, sharing a passion and interest in motorsports. On their Facebook page, Williams Motorsports, you’ll find pictures of the two with various race cars.

It’s clearly evident just how passionate Robert is about the sport and these cars and how supportive Tiffany is of her husband and his passion. However, things were about to change very quickly for this couple as they were faced with a difficult situation.

The Williams family is a middle-class family in America and faces the typical dilemmas that other families in similar conditions do. Making sure your endless bills are paid on time, making ends meet, and hoping you’ve got something to spare.

Naturally, they often check their accounts to make sure the right amounts of money are coming and going. It was during one of these routine checkups that they noticed a strange sum of money had suddenly been deposited. $120,000 had made its way to them on the 31st of May.

They were expecting to see just over $1000 left over for their luxuries. They were instead greeted with an amount over 100 times that. After some back-and-forth on where it could have come from, they settled on what they thought could be the answer.

Their bank, BB&T, must have made a banking error of some kind. Typically, when such a thing happens, you’d quickly contact your bank to try and figure out what really happened. The Williams couple, however, did not and made one of the most impulsive decisions they could.

This entire ordeal presents a moral choice and is not dissimilar to the story of Armando Markaj. The story of Armando is quite the opposite of the Williamses. Armando was a waiter working at Patsy’s Pizzeria, one of New York’s proud pizzeria’s since the 1930s.

It was on a particularly busy Saturday when two women came in and sat down. The last thing a busy waiter needs is someone breathing down your neck, making your life more difficult. Armando would, as it were, have his work cut out for him.

The two women set the tone for Armando with a question — “Why are there so few pictures of women on the wall?” Armando, not really knowing how to respond, attempted to be friendly and joke it off.

“Maybe women don’t eat a lot of pizza?” was his response. To the women, this was clearly the wrong answer, as their mood immediately worsened. Having made up their mind about the type of person Armando is, he quickly departed and was friendly and professional.

Armando was swift with their needs and, by all other accounts, great at his job. After bringing them the bill, he immediately gave them time to pay as he served another customer. As soon as he looked back, they were gone, and he feared they’d left without paying.

However, upon reading, they had paid and left him a note reading, “Maybe women don’t tip either.” Keeping his cool, he cleaned up the table and found an envelope, which he tried to return.

As anyone who has worked in the service industry will tell you, it’s ruthless out there. Many people out there might do the same thing, and you may take the blame for something you didn’t do.

You have to remain as professional as possible, regardless. For people like Armando, their livelihood might rely on tips, so to miss out on even one can feel like getting a salary cut. However, luck might finally turn around for Mr. Markaj.

With the women nowhere in sight, he opened the envelope to try and see if he could find a way to contact them. Inside was a Citibank check for $424,000. Armando was faced with a choice — return it or keep it as revenge.

Armando Markaj has a good heart and put in the effort to track down the name on the check, Karen Vincour. With no way to find her, they kept it in a safe place in the restaurant in the hopes she would come looking for it.

As it turns out, Karen Vincour was one of the women at that table who had been rude to Armando. The check was her life savings, a sum she had received after selling her apartment. It was supposed to go toward buying her new house.

After seemingly losing it, she tried to retrace her steps with the help of her daughter, but to no avail. She even made a call to Patsy’s Pizzeria and the cafe across the street but wasn’t able to confirm if they had her check. She and her estate broker never considered if they’d called the right branch.

According to Citibank, the check was a simple cashier’s check. This meant that Armando could have gone to the bank to process and receive the money. This would have left Karen homeless, given she needed the money for the down payment on her new home.

Karen and her estate broker could have gone to the bank to cancel the check. However, this would have taken around three months of processing. This meant that for at least three months, Karen would have been homeless anyway if Armando had decided to throw it away.

After failing to track her down and Karen never stopping by, Armando and his boss, Frank Brinja, came up with a plan. Seeking to return it, thinking it belonged to a millionaire of sorts, they put out an advertisement in the newspaper.

The plan ended up working, as the news was published in the local paper that Karen had read. It took her only a short time to learn the news. It also didn’t take her long to realize what she had to face when she went to pick it up.

Not half an hour into opening the restaurant, she arrived and immediately saw Armando. Sheepishly, she apologized for how she had treated him and thanked them profusely for keeping the money and not spending it. She even offered Armando a portion for his honesty and as a finder’s fee.

Armando instead declined, letting her keep it all and accepting her apology. The two settled it all over a fresh pizza as they pointed out the women Karen had missed on the wall during the Saturday rush. But as we’ll soon find out, not everyone has the honest heart to do the right thing with money they randomly find.

The Williams’ should have called the bank to verify where the money came from. They instead decided that if they saw the money in their account, it was theirs to spend. After all, why pass up on such a massive opportunity for them?

What they did not foresee was the upcoming clash with the bank and authorities. Taking such a large sum of money for granted may seem like a silly judgment on their part now. You have to keep in mind the literal dollar signs they were seeing at the time.

Robert and Tiffany proceeded to take all 120,000 of those dollars and spend it all throughout June. Between the 3rd and 19th, they’d made all the money seemingly disappear, which immediately sent alerts out to their bank for strange purchases.

They were lucky for quite some time. Usually, your bank would try and contact you in an attempt to verify it’s actually you spending these strange amounts of money. For some reason, BB&T waited until the very end to take action.

The Williams’ had a love and passion for cars, and Robert’s first thought was to indulge that passion and purchase himself a race car. With his ever-supportive wife, they set out to various dealerships in search of their dream car.

In only a few short weeks, the couple was able to not only get themselves a race car but also an SUV and a Chevy. All three vehicles sat in their garage, with some more money going toward repairing the cars they already had.

For some families, one car is enough, and maybe they’ll get an extra luxury car to feel fancier. With five vehicles now in their garage, the Williams decided they also wanted an RV and a car trailer to go with their collection.

After their spending spree, you might have some opinions about the couple. Many have claimed that perhaps the Williams family wasn’t ready or responsible enough to earn such a large amount of money so suddenly. Soon enough, however, we’ll find out how this story takes its downward turn.

They weren’t so selfish as to only spend all the money on themselves. While they did spend a lot of money getting their various cars, they also paid off as many bills as they could. They did spend some of their cash on friends and family, too.

They spent around $15,000 on helping their loved ones with financial struggles. While this may seem like nothing to them, it was enough that no one was asking questions about where the money was coming from.

Looking in from the outside, it looked as though nothing had changed with the Williams household. They were carrying on with their lives as they always had, keeping their luxury spending on the down-low. Even Robert’s father had no idea what was happening with his own son.

While they managed to keep their wealth quiet from the world around them, their spending and dishing out large sums would come back to bite them. Spending irresponsibly might be easy to hide from your parents, but the bank will have their due.

With as much time as they had taken to follow up on the missing money, BB&T was assumed to have forgotten or let go of the $120,000. The Williams had assumed they’d gotten away with it all when suddenly their bank account was frozen.

The company, which had been waiting for their money for weeks now, finally took time to sit with the bank. After some investigation, they found the error and immediately credited them their rightful $120,000. The Williams family was left with $107,000 in overdraft costs.

Despite the significant overdraft costs, the Williamses carried on as usual, keeping all their cards. The bank tried numerous times to contact the couple, but after weeks of dodging, it was assumed the money would never be paid. Eventually, they would get ahold of Tiffany.

She claimed over a call that she would discuss the matter with Robert and try to work out a payment plan. However, after a while of further silence, the bank realized this was all a lie. The Williamses were attempting to avoid all contact with the bank.

As the story would later become more public, news agencies would conduct interviews with those around the Williams house. Their neighbor, Nate Weaver, was in disbelief not only at the banks making such an error but at his neighbors’ actions.

He, like so many others, believed that it was logical for anyone who randomly received money like that to try and get in contact with the bank first. After all, verifying that the money is genuinely yours to spend is very important when it comes to legalities.

At first, the Williamses did not seem to understand the gravity of the situation they were in. They were in deep trouble now as they continued to dodge all contact from the bank. All that was left for the bank to do was contact the police.

They appeared to have expected the bank to sort out the issues themselves, as the couple thought that the bank was solely at fault for the error. However, BB&T was still over their $107K, having tied up all loose ends on their side.

When a bank accidentally gives you money for one reason or another, the second you spend any of it, you are guilty of theft. The money was not intended for you, and you are not the owner of the money.

What the Williamses and anyone who has ever been in their situation should have done is contact the bank and verify the error. The bank will then remove the money and route it to the correct account. Some banks, as an apology, have been known to pay sums out of their pocket as compensation.

As part of their investigation, BB&T discovered that the cause of this whole debacle was a simple typing error. A teller in Georgia had mistyped the account number when processing the deposit and routed the money to the Williams.

Human error at banks isn’t unheard of, and the bank quickly made up for their mistake. The problem is that the money landed in the hands of careless people who immediately took advantage of the error and nearly got away with it, too.

As the Williamses continued to avoid all contact and refuse to pay back the money they owed for overdrafts, the bank had no choice but to involve the police. Even going so far as to come up with a feasible payment plan for the couple, refusal turned this into a criminal case.

The Williams couple was now facing legal action. Their refusal to cooperate meant they were now facing felony charges. They could face up to ten years of prison time for what was essentially theft, and this all led up to their arrests.

After a police investigation, it was concluded that they had received stolen property and committed theft and conspiracy of theft by unlawful taking of movable property. After their interrogations, the couple confessed to their crimes and that they had made their decisions together.

When they were arrested, nobody among their friends and family was even aware of what was happening in their lives. They had still managed to keep it all private, thus not involving their loved ones. The couple would take full responsibility and have no outside help.

Despite their financial situation, the Williams were still able to make a case and managed to lodge a bail. For $50k — $25,000 for each of them — they could buy their freedom, and they managed to somehow get the funds out of nowhere.

For most of the arraignment, the couple remained quiet and never revealed where they got the money. What we did learn that day was this wasn’t Robert’s first time running into money trouble with the bank, which certainly didn’t help their case.

As it turns out, Robert had a similar situation back in 2001. His public record, now made evident for everyone at the hearing, showed that he’d once committed theft by deception-false impression. You’ll commonly hear of this crime when people try to sneak out of restaurants without paying.

In Robert’s case, he was charged with writing a back check, leading to him being charged with a $4,000 fine or three years in prison. Having opted for the fine, you might have expected that he would’ve learned his lesson about cheating the system. But not everyone learns their lesson the first time around.

With so much on the couples’ minds, it’s hard to imagine they had the time to contemplate their actions. After all, if someone is a repeat offender, should we believe that they should be given a third chance? The risk of 10 years imprisonment would be enough to make anyone think twice.

In the end, the couple was given probation and community service, a decision that has been critiqued time and time again. In most peoples’ opinions, the couple got off really lightly and should have received harsher sentences. Robert stated, “It probably wasn’t the best thing in the end,” after their hearing, indicating some personal growth on his part.

The case of the Williams couple is not an uncommon occurrence. Many have suddenly and inexplicably received large sums of money. When it comes to the bank and their money, one should always be careful about how it gets treated.

The mirror between Williams and Armando clearly shows what can happen with a bit of honesty and responsibility. The Williams might have been able to keep some of the money they had been mistakenly given if they had contacted the bank.