Lucky man from Almaty received $500 thousand instead of 500 thousand tenge

A 30-y.o. citizen of Almaty received $500 thousand instead of 500 thousand tenge ($3 thousand) to his bank account because of a mistake in one of Kazakhstan banks, the lucky man told Tengrinews.kz. The incident happened on January 21. The lucky man’s friend in Astana went to one of Kazakhstan's largest banks to transfer 500 thousand tenge to his mate in Almaty. However, the cashier of the bank’s branch in Astana made a mistake in the currency and transferred $500 thousand instead. The sender discovered the mistake almost immediately, but it took some time before the bank realized the terrible mistake: it happened only after the incident arose a heated discussion in Facebook. “When I realized that I have half a million dollars on my account, my first thought was “Cool!” a lucky young man said and assured that he had no plans of withdrawing this money, spending it or transferring to other accounts. “I know of such cases abroad. A similar thing happened in Germany, for example. A man transferred the mistakenly received money to offshore accounts and made it worse for himself in the end. He had to return the money anyway, but additionally he was ordered to pay a fee of several thousand Euro.” “It would have been dishonest of me towards the bank and this cashier. One has to remain honest in any circumstances,” the Almaty citizen said. He continued that his friend who wired the money went back to the bank and sorted out all the paper work to close the incident. The lucky man from Almaty asked the bank’s management not to punish the employee who made the mistake.