Dan Saunders: The ATM Glitch That Made Him a Millionaire Overnight

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[00:02:18] Hey everyone, my name is Nikki Young and this is serial mapper, the number one True Crime

[00:02:37] Podcast for Naps. I'm back with another True Crime story to low you to sleep or perhaps

[00:02:43] to give you nightmares. What would you do if you woke up one day with $1 million in

[00:02:49] your bank account because of some kind of weird glitch? Would you report the mistake to

[00:02:54] the bank or would you keep your riches? For Dan Saunders, a bartender for Australia, this

[00:03:01] is more than a hypothetical situation. It was a real-life dilemma he faced back in 2011.

[00:03:08] One night as he stumbled out of a bar with only $3 in his bank account, he made a simple

[00:03:14] decision that would change his luck and his life forever. He stopped at an ATM on his way

[00:03:19] home to try to withdraw some cash from his nearly-maxed-o credit card and discovered

[00:03:24] a glitch in the system. Somehow the bank machine allowed him to withdraw a lot more money

[00:03:30] than the balance in his account. He was planning to report this glitch to the bank, but

[00:03:36] when he tried to withdraw even more cash, he realized he had uncovered a loophole that

[00:03:42] would allow him to withdraw an endless amount of money forever as long as he stayed on top

[00:03:47] of things. Why spoil a good thing? So instead of calling the bank to let them know about

[00:03:53] this glitch, he spent the next four months living a life of total luxury, buying suits,

[00:04:00] gambling in Vegas and taking lavish vacations. However, as with most things, if something

[00:04:07] sounds too good to be true, then it usually is. The story of how Dan Saunders became an

[00:04:13] overnight millionaire sounds almost too insane to be true, so hang on to your hats and let's

[00:04:20] jump right in. Working as a bartender at a local pub in Wengeretta, Australia, 29-year-old

[00:04:27] Dan Saunders was like any other young man his age. He had recently moved to the area

[00:04:32] to support his fiancee's career, and they were trying to save up enough money to buy a

[00:04:36] home together. Unfortunately, Dan wasn't the greatest at saving money, and he had a little

[00:04:43] bit of a gambling problem. So when his friend Mark asked him to go out for some drinks

[00:04:48] after work one night in 2011, he was reluctant at first. He only had $3 in his bank account,

[00:04:56] he agreed. Dan and Mark decided that Mark would buy the drinks the first half of the night,

[00:05:01] and then Dan would cover the second half. By the time it was Dan's turn, he was fairly

[00:05:06] tipsy. He didn't have any cash on hand, so he had to walk over to a nearby ATM, which was

[00:05:13] operated by the National Australia Bank or NAB. He knew that he only had a few bucks in his account,

[00:05:20] but he wasn't able to confirm the exact amount because the machine kept returning an error message

[00:05:25] that said, balance unavailable at this time. Dan tried transferring $200 from his credit card,

[00:05:31] which was nearly maxed out at $2000 to his savings account, and then he received another error

[00:05:38] that said, transaction cancelled. This time the machine spat his bank card out. At this point, Dan

[00:05:45] had no idea what was happening with the machine, but he was starting to sober up, and he really

[00:05:51] needed another drink. So he tried to withdraw $200 out of his savings account, hoping that the money

[00:05:57] had in fact been transferred by some miracle. The transfer from his credit card to his savings

[00:06:03] account must have actually gone through because the machine spit out $200 cash, and Dan went back

[00:06:10] to his night out without even giving it a second thought. Later that evening on his way home,

[00:06:15] Dan passed the same ATM that he had withdrawn the $200 from. He decided to try his luck again,

[00:06:22] just for fun to see how much money it would allow him to transfer from his maxed out credit card.

[00:06:29] Like I said, he wasn't very good with money. He put his card into the machine and he tried

[00:06:35] to transfer $500 cash from his credit card over to his savings account, and then once again,

[00:06:41] he received the prompt on the screen that read transaction cancelled. $500 was more than

[00:06:48] what he had available on his credit limit, so he was absolutely shocked when he discovered the $500

[00:06:54] over in his savings account. He tried it again, and this time he transferred and withdrew $600

[00:07:00] in cash. Most surprisingly, there was no record on his credit card account statement that listed

[00:07:06] any of these cash transfers. Somehow, he had transferred a ton of money from his nearly maxed

[00:07:13] out credit card over to his savings account and was able to withdraw the cash immediately,

[00:07:19] even though there was no actual money available to be transferred. There was some kind of strange

[00:07:25] glitch happening with the machine, and Dan just happened to be the lucky recipient of hundreds

[00:07:31] of cash that night. The next morning when Dan woke up with a terrible hangover, his mind

[00:07:37] instantly went to the cash that he withdrew from the ATM. He quickly ran to grab his wallet

[00:07:42] to make sure it wasn't some kind of dream, and he found almost $2,000 in cash in his wallet.

[00:07:49] He called to check his account balance, and he learned that he now had negative $2,000 in the bank.

[00:07:55] Whatever had happened, there appeared to be a leg between what the machine allowed him to transfer

[00:08:00] and withdraw, versus what he actually had in his account. So even though he didn't have $2,000

[00:08:05] in his account, it allowed him to withdraw that amount. Dan went to work his shift as a bartender

[00:08:10] that day, with every intention of spending the cash in his wallet, but he decided that he would

[00:08:16] pay it back later. Again, no harm, no foul on his mind, right? He enjoyed several rounds of beer

[00:08:22] with the money, and then decided that he would gamble with the remainder. He thought to himself,

[00:08:27] if he won, he could keep the winnings and then he could pay back the nearly $2,000 that the ATM

[00:08:33] had wrongly dispensed. No one would be any the wiser. Unfortunately, after a few hours of gambling,

[00:08:40] Dan lost all the money. Now Dan was going to have to work extra shifts to try and save up enough

[00:08:47] money to bring his account back out of the red. A few days past since he had lost all of his money

[00:08:54] on a bet. Dan found himself walking by that same ATM. He just couldn't help himself. He put in

[00:09:02] his card and he tried to transfer $1,000 from his credit card to his savings account, which again

[00:09:08] was much more than what he had left on his card. He received the same transaction error message

[00:09:14] before checking his savings account balance and seeing that it was now minus $997.

[00:09:20] He tried again with another 1,000 transfer and his balance was back to the $3 he initially had in

[00:09:26] his savings. This is when Dan's brain went into overdrive as he imagined how he could make this

[00:09:33] glitch work to his advantage. He began testing the waters, transferring mass amounts of money from

[00:09:39] his credit card to his savings account, and then watching for when it would actually show up on

[00:09:45] his statement. All of the times that he was able to successfully transfer money from the credit

[00:09:50] card to his savings happened during the hours of 12 p.m. and 1 a.m. Dan would later learn that during

[00:09:58] this hour, ATMs belonging to the National Australian Bank would go into a standby mode, meaning

[00:10:05] the two networks were not communicating with each other. Rather, whatever money was requested to be

[00:10:11] transferred while the ATMs were in standby mode would just automatically transfer, despite not

[00:10:17] actually having the funds available. The reversal wouldn't happen until at least the next day,

[00:10:23] meaning one could withdraw an infinite amount of cash from the ATM machine during that hour,

[00:10:29] despite the funds not actually being available. With this information, a plan was hatched. Dan

[00:10:35] realized that all he had to do was stay one day ahead of the reversal. He would need to visit

[00:10:41] the ATM and initiate the first transfer between midnight and 1 a.m. Then the next night,

[00:10:47] he would need to transfer double the amount to ensure that his savings account didn't go into

[00:10:53] the negative. As long as he stayed ahead of the curve by one day, Dan had created a loop,

[00:10:59] an endless cash flow. Dan started out by purchasing simple things, like a new refrigerator.

[00:11:07] He also shared some of his money with his girlfriend, Hannaise, by making deposits into their

[00:11:12] joint bank account. Remember, they were saving for a house. He simply told her that he had been

[00:11:17] working extra shifts and was just getting better at saving. Much of his free cash was actually

[00:11:22] spent at the pub, buying rounds of drinks for the entire bar or gambling on horse racing.

[00:11:29] His friends kind of began to wonder where all of this extra cash was coming from.

[00:11:33] Everyone knew that Dan didn't make very much money working as a bartender,

[00:11:39] yet he dropped cash as if he had just won the lottery.

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[00:13:35] He decided that it was probably for the best to keep this secret about the ATM close to his chest,

[00:13:43] only telling us select few friends about what he had learned about this cash machine. Some of

[00:13:49] his friends scolded him, telling him that it was wrong, it was illegal, it wasn't free cash,

[00:13:55] the bank was losing real money and they wanted no part of it. But others, they were happy with

[00:14:01] looking the other way. They just wanted to be able to enjoy the fruits of his crime without

[00:14:07] actually getting their hands dirty. When meeting new people, Dan told people that he had a job

[00:14:13] in finance but he wasn't any more specific than that and I mean technically that is true. He

[00:14:19] now had a job scamming the finance industry. It wasn't long before Dan began using this glitchy ATM

[00:14:26] money to live a life of luxury as he had always dreamed of. Dan enjoyed a penthouse suite at the Crown

[00:14:33] Tower Hotel in Melbourne where he threw lavish parties for anyone who wanted to attend. He drank,

[00:14:41] he gambled and he cruised around the city in stretch limousines. Dan shopped at the finest luxury

[00:14:48] brand stores where he would pick out a new designer suit to wear every day. He even churred at a

[00:14:54] private jet for $90,000 to take his friends on a trip to a private island in Bali. Dan felt like

[00:15:02] he was a rock star but his girlfriend she didn't really care for his new lavish lifestyle.

[00:15:08] She heard that he was spending large amounts of money on gambling and partying and she broke up with

[00:15:15] him via text message. Unfortunately, money can't buy you everything. Oddly enough, his bank would

[00:15:22] call him every once in a while. Just to make sure certain transactions appearing on his account

[00:15:27] were really made by him and not someone trying to commit fraud on his account. However, they never

[00:15:34] once mentioned the odd activity happening between his accounts which was caused by this glitch.

[00:15:40] Did no one at the bank notice all of this missing money? Dan would say quote,

[00:15:46] I had a few calls from the bank's security branch saying we can see you tried to get $900,000

[00:15:52] out four times at an ATM last night. I would say how the hell would you get $900,000 out of an ATM?

[00:16:00] And they would say yeah, there are limits. So we would laugh and then I'd say I was drunk

[00:16:06] and I must have been at the ATM pressing the wrong buttons. After a while of big spending,

[00:16:12] Dan began to feel guilty about all of the money he was taking. So he tried to share the wealth.

[00:16:18] He paid off his friend's debts, including a student loan and he even gave one couple of complete

[00:16:24] strangers enough cash to take their dream vacation. Over the course of four and a half months,

[00:16:31] Dan would spend around $1.6 million. It seemed like the perfect plan to generate unlimited wealth

[00:16:39] if he could keep it up. Although this glitch was allowing him access to basically an infinite

[00:16:45] amount of money, he still had to take action to ensure that he didn't get caught and that his balance,

[00:16:51] his negative balance, didn't catch up to him. So in order to keep the scam going,

[00:16:56] Dan had to ensure that he woke up each night to go to an ATM to transfer enough cash so that his

[00:17:03] savings account wouldn't go into the negative. Each time having to take out double the amount,

[00:17:09] enough to cover his last transfer and enough to make up the balance. If he missed just one night

[00:17:16] of transfers, his entire balance could catch up to him and then everything would fall apart.

[00:17:22] I know it's all kind of confusing to understand how this whole thing worked but basically every single

[00:17:28] night at some point during that one hour where the two systems weren't communicating with each other,

[00:17:33] he had to make a transfer of money. He had to transfer at least whatever he took out the night prior

[00:17:39] plus whatever extra money he wanted for cash. Otherwise his true negative balance showing all

[00:17:45] of his cash advances would finally be revealed. He had to make sure he had access to one of those

[00:17:52] bank machines every single night for that hour. Because of this, Dan was also beginning to experience

[00:17:59] anxiety, nightmares and paranoia. He believed that it was kind of just a matter of time until the

[00:18:06] bank found out what was happening and what he was doing and called the police. Some nights he would

[00:18:12] wake up in a cold sweat after dreaming that SWAT was at his door ready to break it down and arrest him.

[00:18:19] He had literally stolen over a million dollars from the bank. After four and a half months of waiting

[00:18:25] for the other foot to drop, Dan decided that it simply wasn't worth the risk or the stress to

[00:18:32] continue going. It was time to put a stop to the scheme. One day he just stopped doing the cash

[00:18:39] transfers and his true balance caught up to him negative 1.6 million dollars. He also decided to

[00:18:47] call the bank and let them know what was happening. Talk about his account activity. They informed him

[00:18:53] that this was now a police matter so they couldn't provide any information. Dan was sure that the police

[00:19:01] would be at his door to arrest him anytime now, now that the bank was aware of what was happening.

[00:19:07] He waited two months no knock and those months would turn into years without Dan ever hearing

[00:19:13] anything about charges being laid or a police report being filed. Can you imagine doing something

[00:19:19] seriously criminal, turning yourself in and then having to sit around and just wait for your

[00:19:25] freedom to be taken from you? Because of all the anxiety, Dan wound up going to see a psychiatrist

[00:19:32] but upon hearing Dan's story about the stolen cash and waiting for the police to arrest him.

[00:19:37] This psychiatrist basically threw their hands up in the air and said, I'm not qualified to do this.

[00:19:43] So he went to another psychiatrist who reaffirmed to him that he wouldn't feel free from this until

[00:19:49] there was a conclusion some kind of resolution to this wild adventure he had been on. Unbeknownst to

[00:19:57] Dan the National Australian Bank had decided not to pursue charges against him despite the fact that

[00:20:04] he had stolen over a million dollars from them. Doing so would have meant that they would now have

[00:20:10] to reveal the story of how Dan Saunders had found a glitch in their system to steal money from

[00:20:16] them for over four months without ever getting caught. A serious privacy breach, a serious breach

[00:20:23] of contract meaning their systems weren't as secure as they like to believe. This should have been

[00:20:31] great news to Dan but he didn't want to live the rest of his life feeling like the police could

[00:20:36] show up at his door with an arrest warrant at any time. So he decided to take things to the media.

[00:20:42] The bank would no longer be able to ignore him if his full story was out in the news.

[00:20:49] After appearing on a popular national TV show called A Current Affair where he detailed how he stole

[00:20:55] 1.6 million from the bank, the police just couldn't look away. Three years after that first night he

[00:21:02] found the ATM glitch while out at the bar Dan Saunders was arrested and charged with fraud and theft.

[00:21:09] He pled guilty and he was sentenced to 12 months in a maximum security prison plus 18 months of

[00:21:15] community service and then ordered to pay back $250,000. Once he was released from prison he returned

[00:21:23] to working a job as a bartender, making around $22 an hour but he says he has no regrets.

[00:21:31] In a podcast interview with Vice he would say quote,

[00:21:35] I learned that faced with temptation it's easy to lose your true self but I'm slowly getting

[00:21:41] back to neutral. I felt like McColley Culkin after Home Alone too, like your hot one minute and

[00:21:47] then your sort of not the next and it's a bit hard to take. There was definitely a hangover time

[00:21:53] when I thought geez maybe I should have gone to Spain after all. I think the money in just a

[00:22:00] general good time made it sort of bearable but I always knew that something someone would camel

[00:22:07] something happened so it was quite bad for him when they actually didn't come. At the end of it all

[00:22:12] I had to say to myself am I the international criminal who is just going to transfer the money away

[00:22:20] and never be saying again? That's when I stopped doing it because that's when I asked myself

[00:22:24] that question you know are you going to be that person then you know the answer was no.

[00:22:29] The only thing that was thought of was a good time because I thought it was going to end every day

[00:22:33] anyway. I didn't realize that it was going to get up to millions of dollars or doing anything like

[00:22:37] that. I didn't. I thought it ended after one week, I didn't get it ended after four and half months

[00:22:42] and 1.6 million dollars later. Yeah, I didn't know.

[00:22:46] The National Australia Bank has never officially commented on Dan's situation or what caused

[00:22:52] the glitch but you better believe they've fixed the situation so sorry to burst your bubble but

[00:22:58] you can't take advantage of that glitch anymore. So again I ask you what would you do if you woke

[00:23:04] up one day with one million dollars in your bank account due to a glitch? Would you report the

[00:23:10] mistake to the bank or would you keep your riches? And what if you knew the bank was never going

[00:23:16] to pursue legal charges? Would that change your mind? I'd love to know what you would do if you

[00:23:21] were Dan Saunders. That's it for me tonight. If you want to reach out, you can find me on Facebook

[00:23:27] at serial napper. I also have a true crime discussion group. It's called serial society and I'll

[00:23:32] have the link in my show notes. I'd love to chat with you about this case and all of the other cases

[00:23:37] that I cover. You can find my audio on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[00:23:44] I post all of my episodes in video format over on YouTube so go check it out and if you're watching

[00:23:49] on YouTube I'd love if you can give me a thumbs up and subscribe. I'm over on X formerly known as

[00:23:57] Twitter at serial underscore napper and I post things on TikTok serial napper nick and that's

[00:24:02] all one word. Until next time, sweet dreams, stay kind, especially in the comments. Bye!

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