DALLAS (KTVT) – Ruth Balloon was finishing up her shift at Roma Boots in Dallas.
She said she was having a good day.
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Things got more interesting a little later when she decided to check her account at LegacyTexas Bank.
“I was like, ‘wow, we have a lot of money’!”
Ruth’s account had an extra $37,203,337 in it.
Despite her initial hopes, it was not a Christmas miracle.
“I hoped someone really gifted us with that $37-million,” said Balloon.
The first thing she did was take a breath and then tell her husband about it.
He then called the bank to ask about the deposit that was clearly too good to be true.
Balloon said they were told it was a clerical error. The bank apologized and took back the money.
“I was a millionaire, I have a screenshot of it so I can say that now,” said Balloon. “It’s quite a story.”
She said there was no way she was going to keep the money, but she hopes the bank will give her a reward of some kind.
“A ‘thank you’ reward would be a little bit good. Just for being a good customer and notifying them as soon as possible,” she said.
While her millions were only around for a day and a half, that was enough time for her to think about how she could have spent it.
“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 said.
CBS 11 reached out to LegacyTexas Bank about what happened and they gave the following statement:
On Tuesday, December 10, our client made a foreign currency deposit into her LegacyTexas account. Due to the fluctuation in exchange rates, all foreign currency transactions must be manually entered into our system through our back office. When our client’s deposit was being keyed in, our representative entered her account number into the amount field by mistake.
Although our client brought the error to our attention and the transaction was immediately reversed, less the amount of her original deposit, it would have been caught and corrected during our evening processing. Rest assured, our systems are sound, and this manual entry error has been addressed.