Chase’s Response on What Those Billion Dollar Mistakes Really Were

Over the last few weeks, several people had come forward about how they were stunned to find billion dollar deposits in their account. One family said their account showed $50 billion in their account. All of these accounts were with Chase and this is what Chase said about those mistakes.

Update From Chase About the Billion Dollar Errors

There were two incidents that I had written about and a third that had taken place as well. In the third instance, the account holder said that it showed she was in debt for the $50 billion.

In the other two cases, in the photos I had seen and the stories I had read, it did also sound like maybe the amount of money was never in their accounts. In fact, the first incident had the woman reporting that she was unable to withdraw any money and that it would kick in an overdraft fee – even though she had the money of her own to withdraw from.

In the second incident, the $50 billion one, the photos of the account showed that the amount was held and would be made available in 2099. Instead of this couple being $50 billion richer, it looked like the account was actually on hold and held against their account for the $50 billion amount.

Chase gave a response to WFLA and said that (regarding the first incident of $1 billion) it was never a balanced but a debit of $1 billion that was listed on her account. They said it is a security protocol that kicked in preventing her from accessing the account but said that the account had been flagged and frozen because “Yonkowski’s late husband was a joint owner of the bank account, and it was flagged when she attempted to use it. Chase Bank said people are required to turn in proper documentation in a situation like this to avoid a freeze on a joint bank account.” 

It sounds like the Chase rep was trying to deal with two issues and make them sound like they were related – the $1 billion mistake and the account being frozen. Obviously, the death of the woman’s husband had nothing to do with the billion dollar mistake and Chase is now claiming that these were “negative balances” instead of an actual billion dollar windfall. This means that the account holders never really would have had access to the funds anyway.

That still doesn’t bring a lot of comfort – that Chase had a malfunction that caused at least 3 accounts to show billion dollar negative balances. Imagine if the overdraft protections had kicked in or some other account program. Of course, it would have been up to Chase to make this right but banks can take a long time to deal with things…

Hey, at least Wells Fargo made Chase not look as bad since Wells Fargo up and decided to shut down all personal lines of credit – even telling customers it may impact their credit score as a result.