A Texan woman got the shock of her life when her bank mistakenly transferred over $37 million dollars to her account.
Ruth Balloon stumbled across the staggering sum as she checked her bank account, leaving the mum-of-two a multi-millionaire - albeit only briefly.
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Whilst most of us would have disappeared into the sunset after getting that deposit, the 35-year-old did return the money and joked that she’d had ‘big plans’ for the sudden windfall.
At the time, Balloon had been finishing a shift at the Roma Boots boutique in Dallas when her life suddenly changed – with an extra $37 million (£31m) to spare.
Recalling the moment, she told CBS Texas that she was initially just in shock telling them: “Wow, we have a lot of money'!"
Given that the life-changing sum had suddenly appeared, Balloon hoped that she had been ‘really gifted’ with the lucky windfall.
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Deep down though, she knew it was too good to be true and took a breath before reaching out to her husband, Brian.
Unlike the sales assistant though, her spouse was less excited with Brian believing the millions of dollars were a scam and he immediately called their bank, LegacyTexas.
The couple were later told that a bank clerical error had occurred, with a teller punching in the account number instead of the figure – resulting in the staggering sum.
After realising the accounting error, the local bank apologised and removed millions of dollars from the couple’s account.
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Given that it had taken a few hours for the mistake to be rectified, Balloon had more than enough time to imagine how she’d spend the millions.
"First I was going to do 10% tithing. Then I was going to donate some money and then I would have invested in real estate,” she revealed during the interview but knew that she’d have to return the funds.
"Even if the amount was a real transfer, I knew the money did not belong to us. I could not spend money that does not belong to us,” she added: “I did daydream of what I would do with it if I did have it."
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Whilst the millions might be gone, the mum-of-two did admit to taking a screenshot as proof of the strange story.
"I was a millionaire, I have a screenshot of it so I can say that now, it's quite a story!" Balloon joked, adding that she hoped the bank would give her a reward for her honesty.
"A 'thank you' reward would be a little bit good. Just for being a good customer and notifying them as soon as possible," Balloon told news crews.
We couldn’t agree more.