A man was left baffled after he woke up to find that $89,000,000 was sitting in his bank account.
It’s the stuff of dreams but one man awoke to find that it was a reality.
And Daniel Levene thought he had struck gold after discovering the enormous amount in his account.
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The New York native is a Manhattan venture capitalist who initially believed that his investments had really paid off when he checked his bank account one morning back in April 2023.
Levene is a former Goldman Sachs bond trader and he couldn’t believe his eyes when he logged into his computer for business as usual and was stunned by the number of zeroes in his bank balance.
The $89 million had been put into his account by E-Trade Financial Corporation, which is a subsidiary of Morgan Stanley, and the firm offers an electronic trading platform to trade financial assets.
At first, Levene considered whether he had won the lottery before calling a friend to reveal the news.
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On the call, Levene joked: “Let’s go to Monaco, buy a yacht, and watch the Grand Prix.”
Next, the man contacted a customer service representative at E-Trade, writing: “This is interesting - Please call me IMMEDIATELY - Did I just win the Lottery???”
Speaking to The New York Post, Levene confessed that he knew ‘it was a mistake’.
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Now you’d be forgiven for thinking that a company would notice a missing $89 million pretty quickly - but it doesn't seem so.
Instead of replying in minutes, or calling Daniel ‘IMMEDIATELY’ as he had requested, they actually took more than an hour to get back to him and sort the return.
The company apologized profusely for dashing Levene’s financial hopes and dreams, but they didn’t immediately offer up an explanation.
A representative for E-Trade said they ‘did not process any wire transfers anywhere in the neighborhood of what is being suggested’.
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They insisted that if such an unusual case were to happen, the company would ‘always work closely with that customer to resolve the issue’.
They went on to add: “In such a case, no funds would have left the firm.”
It seems like it might have been better for Levene to have just kept quiet about his newfound wealth and he could be halfway round the world by now relaxing on a yacht in Monaco.
But it looks like the cause of the mishap will remain a mystery.