Midnight ATM Glitch Enables Repeated Cash Withdrawals In 2011, 29-year-old Australian bartender Dan discovers an ATM anomaly: after a failed credit-card-to-savings transfer, cash withdrawals from his near-empty savings still succeed. By experimenting nightly, he learns that transferring a small amount from his credit card keeps the balance positive and lets him pull cash repeatedly. The loophole only works between 1 and 3 a.m. when ATMs go offline; within two weeks he withdraws over $20,000 and soon technically becomes a millionaire.
Lavish Spending Shadowed by Mounting Paranoia Flush with cash, he indulges in nice restaurants, luxury hotels, vacations including Paris, and clothes, even chartering a $90,000 private jet to an exotic Asian island with friends and gambling a lot. He splurges on others too, tipping hundreds and paying for hotel rooms for homeless people, while telling acquaintances he works in real estate or investment banking. Despite nightly hauls, no alarms sound; even an in-person bank visit raises no suspicion. The thrill curdles into anxiety as he wakes fearing arrest, dreads phone calls, and suffers nightmares about a SWAT raid.
Confession, Publicity, and a Puzzling Prosecution After four months, he quits and admits everything to the bank, having withdrawn and spent over AU$1.6 million (about US$1 million). The bank says police will contact him, but nothing happens for three years as anxiety and guilt drive him to a psychiatrist. Seeking relief, he goes public in interviews; a TV producer tips off authorities, revealing the bank never reported him. He is arrested, and in court neither prosecutors, judge, nor the bank can explain the glitch. With the mechanism unclear, he receives a relatively light sentence of one year in prison.