
“I lost my inheritance with one wrong digit on my sort code” - vanilla-almond
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/dec/07/i-lost-my-193000-inheritance-with-one-wrong-digit-on-my-sort-code
======
jen729w
Nothing has changed since this happened to me, in reverse, in 1996.

18-year-old me had an account with the Halifax, then a building society. One
week, £50 appeared in this account. I knew it wasn't for me, and didn't want
to spend it as I knew I'd have to give it back at some point. (I'd asked my
girlfriend's dad, a lawyer who worked for the Crown Prosecution Service, if I
could just keep it. He compared it to someone parking their car on my
driveway. They shouldn't leave it there, but that doesn't mean it becomes my
car.)

I wrote – on paper, in an envelope – to the Halifax. They said they'd do
something about it. They didn't, and a month later another fifty quid arrives.
This went on for a few months, from memory. When they finally sorted it, I
pointed out that another bank (HSBC?) was, at the time, offering a £25 'sorry,
we screwed up' payment. I suggested that they might like to send me £25.

The manager wrote back and told me that as 'no inconvenience or cost was
incurred by me' as a result of this error, he didn't see why he should give me
£25. Looking back, this event shaped how I feel about corporations, about how
the 'little guy' is treated. I was fucking furious, so I meticulously detailed
all of the costs, including my time at the minimum wage of the day, and put
them in a letter. I mean down to the cost of the envelopes, the stamps, and
the landline calls that I'd made. Everything, itemised. It was beautiful.

I called and got the manager on the phone. I explained my stance, and read
through each line of the letter I was about to send. "Do you agree that this
was a cost incurred by me?", I asked after every line. He couldn't disagree. I
think the total was somewhere around £60. I finished the call by saying that
he'd be getting this detail in the mail, and that it wasn't a letter this
time, it was an invoice. Then – oh man, I remember this – I just hung up on
him.

They sent me a cheque.

~~~
ellius
If anything, the amount of shadow work foisted on customers has increased.
Somehow it's a norm to have to go through a bunch of bullshit to have errors
corrected and often just to get halfway decent service. It's obviously worse
in industries without meaningful competition, but society in general seems to
put up with it and assume that's just the way it is.

~~~
tehwebguy
Yes - it is not illegal or even unlawful for a doctor, an insurance company, a
utility like a power / phone / water company to send you a grossly incorrect
bill and cause you dozens of hours of work to get them to see THEIR mistake.

If our Internet cuts out and I have to call in to get it fixed I calmly but
firmly let them know that I must be fully credited for the day, pro rata.

They always have beef with this and tell me that “normally they don’t do X or
Y unless A or B”. I tell them that I fully understand their position, but my
position is this:

“When I hang up this phone call it will either be because you have credited me
for the day that my service failed and I had to do your company’s job
debugging it, or because I have terminated my service. The choice is yours but
those are the only options.”

~~~
DataWorker
That’s how I wound up reverting to DSL service for a year. The invisible hand
can’t grasp monopolies.

~~~
pitaj
Don't blame "the invisible hand" (the market) for those monopolies.

Utilities like water, gas, and electricity are monopolized by the state: torn
away from the market's invisible hand.

Internet providers use government regulations, not available market forces, to
keep out competitors.

~~~
Faark
> Internet providers use government regulations, not available market forces,
> to keep out competitors.

High initial investment cost have totally no role to play at that. Or
landlords allowing only a single ISP [0]... that's just part of the market...
you can always move, after all. But no, dysfunctional markets must be because
of government regulation, since markets are so great that there are no other
form of market failures.

Sorry, but equating regulatory capture with "government regulations" kind of
triggers me. Companies obviously will use everything possible to their
advantage. Including dysfunctional governments. At that point, fixing your gov
might be the more important issue...

[0] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/fcc-siding-
landlords-a...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/fcc-siding-landlords-
and-comcast-over-tenants-who-want-broadband-choices)

~~~
pitaj
High initial investment costs (for laying fiber etc) won't stop someone like
Google. What stopped Google fiber was regulatory barriers set up by
municipalities to help their local ISP cronies.

> Sorry, but equating regulatory capture with "government regulations" kind of
> triggers me.

Regulatory capture is composed of government regulations.

> fixing your gov might be the more important issue

Exactly

~~~
scarface74
Well, Google isn’t blameless here. Google was also either hubristic or
incompetent and thought just because they were full of smart people, could
“fix” anything.

Google Fiber and “shallow trenching”. [https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2019/02/googl...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2019/02/google-fiber-exits-louisville-after-shoddy-installs-left-
exposed-wires-in-roads/)

It’s also not exactly unlike Google to abandon projects for the new ooh shiny.

~~~
pitaj
As I understand it, shallow trenching was a way to try to get around incumbent
lock-in. They were trying to bypass the barriers that were raised by
regulatory capture.

~~~
scarface74
No they did it just for speed and cost. Once they got permission and right of
way access from the city to do trenching, it wasn’t a different permit to do
shallow trenching as opposed to the regular method.

------
PeterisP
This is kind of shitty, but once the situation occurred (due to the stupid and
IMHO inexcusable situation of "An oddity in Teich’s case is that Barclays also
appeared to have identical account numbers for two different customers") there
really aren't good solutions of the (unintended) recipient disputes the
reversal and claims that that's money intended for them.

All the things he initially asked Barclays to do were refused not because they
didn't want to do that, but because Barclays can't do that. They can't return
the money without a court order (in these particular circumstances the payment
was "executed correctly" according to the legal criteria, because the payment
was intended to be sent to that account number and was credited to the
matchign account number, so any uf the more common justifications of error-
fixing can't apply. But the payment laws pretty much implicitly assume that
the account numbers are unique, and they weren't in this case), so if the
recipient disagrees, then either it goes to court or the money stays there.
Furthermore, revealing the account holder's identity would be a crime under
banking secrecy laws - again, a court order was needed for that, it's not
something that Barclays is allowed to do at their discretion.

What does seem ugly is the obscene legal costs - it should not take 12000 and
34000 pounds to submit a simple claim to the court that (as far as I
understand) was not even contested.

~~~
awinder
Maybe some details are missing but for such a sum, maybe Barclays should have
had someone in legal helpfully call the problem customer and explain that they
were never going to get away with it, it would cost them more in the long run,
and oh yeah, that they weren’t going to be a Barclays customer if they didn’t
return the cash?

~~~
gregoriol
Yes, that's how you handle such a thing!

------
awinder
“Angered by the bank’s reply, Teich contacted the Guardian for help. We asked
it to reconsider his case, and in an almost immediate U-turn, it has now
agreed to pay all his legal fees, and has offered him £750 in compensation.”

If your business can immediately do the right thing when contacted by a
newspaper in a no-brainer case like this, but not a second sooner, then you’ve
got problems. That said why in the world did the individual who forced this to
court not get slapped with covering his court fees?

~~~
tjpnz
Corporations by their very nature won't lift a finger unless it threatens
their bottom line. Without that kind of leverage you're at the mercy of their
employees - and in banking there's going to be a whole lot of red tape
preventing them from doing the "correct" thing.

~~~
matheusmoreira
Then we should make sure their bottom lines are constantly threatened. May
their their fingers never rest ever again.

------
derangedHorse
I understand that the other account holder's sentiment might have been "it's
the bank's money" at first, but I don't understand how someone could accept
money that effectively belonged to someone else and was only given to that
other account-holder by mistake. It's effectively stealing in my eyes.
Barclay's is also at fault here because at the very least they should have
reimbursed Teich the full amount. He did make a mistake, but it was a mistake
that should have been caught by the bank if they just made sure the
recipient's account aligned with _all_ the information specified by Teich.

~~~
user5994461
Pretty sure that by British law, they have to transfer back the money that was
erroneous transferred to them.

~~~
gambiting
It took the guy 2 years and nearly 50 thousand pounds to get it back. The law
can say whatever, but if there's no enforcement then what are you going to do?
There's a good chance you can get away with it, but yes, the guy had an
extraordinarily bad luck of sending the money to someone who had zero morals.
I'm sure(hope?) that most people would give the money back.

~~~
gambiting
In addition to that - the person who kept the money had literally no
punishment for doing this. It is my understanding that they simply had to give
it back and that's it. Even if they only kept it in a savings account for 2
years that would have generated a non-insignificant amount of interest(so they
benefited financially from their crime) yet there is absolutely no punishment
for it.

------
t34543
> Teich contacted the Guardian for help. We asked it to reconsider his case,
> and in an almost immediate U-turn, it has now agreed to pay all his legal
> fees, and has offered him £750 in compensation.

This is the unfortunate state of business. You’re fucked unless you can rake a
company over the coals in a public.

------
really3452
This is why all account numbers should end in a 6 to 12 digit checksum
verification, to protect against human input error. If this bank had
implemented this simple precaution then the entire situation would have never
occurred.

~~~
wcoenen
This system already exists and is called the IBAN (although it has only two
checksum digits, mod 97). I thought it was used for all bank transfers in the
EU now, but apparently the old system is still in use in the UK.

[https://www.xe.com/ibancalculator/sample/?ibancountry=united...](https://www.xe.com/ibancalculator/sample/?ibancountry=united%20kingdom)

~~~
dfawcus
Almost all the UK banks still use sort code and account for transfers, even
though the accounts have IBANs.

It is often possible to perform foreign transfers using destination IBANs, but
they seem to prefer (or require) the traditional approach for UK Sterling
transfers.

I can understand why they retain the old system, but it would be useful if
they in addition offered the ability to specify the target via IBAN for
domestic transfers, since they already do for transfers to the rest of the EU.

Even when doing a SWIFT transfer, the IBAN (if one has it) is useful.

~~~
Aeolun
I do not understand why they retain the old system? What possible good effect
can this have?

Japan has the same system of sort/branch codes and account number, but when I
enter those here the recipient name is automatically filled out, making
incorrect transfers pretty much impossible (unless, I guess, your mis-entered
transfer to Mr. Sato is transferred to a different Mr. Sato instead)

~~~
erincandescent
It's baked into various systems, protocols and conventions? Sweden and other
EU countries which didn't adopt the Euro also retain their traditional account
numbering systems

A part of the Eurozone transition was that all local systems were replaced by
SEPA SCT/SDD, which are inherently IBAN based. But SCT/SDD only apply to Euro
transfers, and so in non-eurozone locales the existing infrastructure and
nomenclature is retained

> Japan has the same system of sort/branch codes and account number, but when
> I enter those here the recipient name is automatically filled out, making
> incorrect transfers pretty much impossible (unless, I guess, your mis-
> entered transfer to Mr. Sato is transferred to a different Mr. Sato instead)

There is a Confirmation of Payee system coming soon in the UK (which most of
the large banks have, unfortunately, delayed). It works slightly differently:
it will compare the name, but not _generally_ tell you the name of the
recipient because that comes with privacy concerns

~~~
garaetjjte
>Sweden and other EU countries which didn't adopt the Euro also retain their
traditional account numbering systems

These could be compatible though. e.g. in Poland numbers used for local bank
transfers are just IBANs with country code trimmed from the front.

------
Bostonian
The worst actor in this the person who refused to return the mistaken
transfer. Why isn't he or she going to jail or at the least being sued for
legal fees? Why does the article only talk about corporate sloppiness but not
personal misbehavior? Why isn't the law changed so that people getting
mistaken transfers can be identified quickly if they do not return the money?

~~~
gandalfian
Actually if a large amount turns up in your account I wouldn't give it back or
touch it at all. That's how you end up enmeshed in scams and money laundering.
Insist others sort it out properly. Whether the person tried to spend the
mistaken money is really speculative gossip, we don't really know.

~~~
ketamine__
We de know because the article said that they withdrew the money. Do you have
evidence to the contrary?

~~~
gandalfian
I do not have evidence to the contrary. But a journalist carefully saying it
is the opinion of the aggrieved party that the other person was an outright
villain does not make it so. It could be true, it could be a mistake or
somewhere in the middle. I don't think we will ever know.

------
contingencies
I maintain an IBAN library.[0] There is actually a lot that is interesting
about account numbers. Really well designed account number systems do not
include similar glyphs, for example both '1' and 'L' or both '0' and 'O'
should not both be present. I have compiled a retroactive list of probable
transposition errors in my library, which can recommend checksum-correct
potential input intent through brute force search.[1]

While many countries and specific banks had or have alternate checksum systems
that pre-date IBAN, not all of them actually cover the whole account number
(eg. may only cover the account number itself, not the sort code / branch code
/ bank code / whatever else). These are also falling out of use at an
unreported rate so it is often difficult to determine whether or not they are
now significant. Often a bank just starts ignoring its previous rules without
telling anyone, leading to popular confusion.

IBAN is a pretty well designed system, possibly excepting the mistranscription
issues which it probably considered out of scope but could have seriously
helped to avoid with recommendations / best practices. The point of all this
is that you shouldn't reinvent the wheel... and that goes for digital banking
and digital currency systems as well as any other system with identifiers that
may need to be manually analyzed, compared, reported or transcribed.

[0] [https://github.com/globalcitizen/php-
iban](https://github.com/globalcitizen/php-iban) [1]
[https://raw.githubusercontent.com/globalcitizen/php-
iban/mas...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/globalcitizen/php-
iban/master/mistranscriptions.txt)

------
occamrazor
Don't UK banks use IBAN? It contains a two digit checksum that prevents
exactly this kind of mistakes.

~~~
lol768
Many UK banks will issue IBANs (they are trivially calculated from the sort
code and account number anyway), and payments can be made to IBANs - but for
transfers _within_ the UK, there is no need to provide an IBAN.

Note that it is still possible to check an account number without an IBAN:
[https://github.com/AntoineAugusti/moduluschecking](https://github.com/AntoineAugusti/moduluschecking)

The issue here was not the account number being wrong, but rather the
combination of sort code and account number being wrong - for which there is
not necessarily a checksum digit covering the pair.

~~~
dfawcus
Most UK IBANs can be trivially derived from the sort code and account.

I have some accounts where the sort code and account are not directly embedded
in the IBAN. So for those possibly there is a mapping table one could refer
to.

~~~
erincandescent
You can _always_ derive it. For any case where you can't, something funky is
going on (perhaps a common holding account IBAN where customer-specific
information is encoded in the reference. I've seen this occasionally from
TransferWise and Revolut)

------
mixmastamyk
Yep. I lived in a country for while with modern banking. Bills were sometimes
paid instantly, but often paid that night. Some folks still complained
however, wanting it all to be instantaneous. Yes, that's possible these days,
but be careful what you wish for.

I fixed one mistake on a bill payment made in the afternoon later in the
evening, thought "thank $diety," and learned an important lesson. Certainly
large transactions should receive a modicum of scrutiny and delay to finalize.

Also, it's easy to criticize the bank, but what should one do when a
transaction is disputed by the two parties? How does the bank know which is
lying or mistaken, for sure? Sounds like the perfect time for a court to get
involved—that's what they do.

~~~
nmca
It's easy to criticize the bank because they're clearly in the wrong here.
Names and addresses are provided and don't match at all

~~~
Too
What if the guy in the article intentionally provided wrong details? So he
could purchase a valuable item using money in receiving account as proof of
payment and then refund the money and keep both the item and the money?

I don't think that's the case but seeing it from the banks point of view such
scenarios could exist.

------
drdeadringer
About 10 years ago I had a "near miss" regarding rolling over "traditional"
and "roth" 401k monies via a "trustee to trustee transfer" into separate,
segregated accounts on the receiving end.

I'm in the US.

For whatever reason, and to this day I swear I was not at fault in giving
correct or incorrect numbers across the board, both "roth" and "traditional"
monies got dumped into the same receiving "traditional" 401k account. Bad
times.

Fortunately, the person I spoke to over the phone understood the situation ...
excused themselves to their manager ... called me back with a solution that
included a specialized tax form to sort it all out.

A few days later somebody else in the receiving company called me up all "what
is going on with this FUBAR?!?". I let them out-wind themselves, then calmly
explained the situation as it had been to me, and then all was well for the
second time.

Tax time came around and thankfully all became well for the third time around.

Since I am paranoid against the US IRS, I keep paper records for 9 years and
on top of that digital-copy records going as far back as I ever can.

Still, this is not as bad as OP-posted article, but I got scared just brushing
against such an issue.

------
jayalpha
"The banking industry promised that from mid-2019 name checks would be carried
out when customers sent money to other people"

Wow. So far behind.

"Barclays said it asked the person who received the cash for permission to
return the money, but he refused."

There is nothing to refuse. The law in my country would be pretty clear about
this. Honestly, just to prevent the guy withdrawing and spending it, it would
very likely pay him a visit. But that is me.

~~~
mantap
Okay but say I receive money from you, I send you goods or services, then you
fraudulently claim to the bank that the transfer was erroneous. The law is as
it is because arbitrating disputes between customers is correctly a matter for
the courts not for banks. In normal circumstances the recipient would return
the money and not try to steal it. The entire problem here is because the
recipient fraudulently disputed the return of the money.

The better resolution is to make sure such errors don't happen in the first
place.

------
djohnston
im glad this all worked out in the end. i also find it sad that the sod who
received the funds couldn't be bothered to avoid pillaging someone else's
inheritance, but given my general misanthropy i'm not surprised

------
osrec
Sending money between accounts is a jittery experience for me. There is almost
no confirmation that the money has gone to the right place, and no checks in
case of human error.

I feel we need an additional per-account verification hash that works as
follows:

1\. Enter recipient bank details in online bank screen.

2\. You are then shown a verification hash based on the details entered - you
confirm it matches the hash provided by the recipient (obviously, make the
hash easy to compare visually).

3\. You enter the amount to send and hit send.

This way you can at least ensure the money is going to the correct place.
Right now, if you happen to send the money to an unintended bank account, you
may never know until the intended recipient tells you.

------
adontz
Wow, it seems banking system in Georgia (the republic of) is so developed.

We use IBANs (despite we are not in Euro zone and most international transfers
are in USD), so errors in one digit will be immediately identified and request
will get rejected.

Also, if transaction is within the same bank, we always see full name, first
name and last name initial, or first name initial and last name (depends on
bank and transfer method) before final confirmation.

------
AlexCoventry
What is a sort code? I don't think the US or Australia have the concept. It's
weird to me that people would have the same account number.

~~~
thetinguy
Yes, the US does have a similar concept. It’s called the routing number.

~~~
techsupporter
To tell a fun anecdote: My parents have two bank accounts with identical
account numbers and different routing numbers. They still use both accounts
for legacy features of each.

The accounts used to be a single account at one financial institution. It got
bought by a larger financial institution about ten years after they were
married (this was their first joint account as a couple). Fifteen years after
that, the bank split apart into three regional banks. The routing number
changed with each corporate change but the account number persisted. In the
last split, some customers who had property mortgages were “retained” by the
divesting bank and “acquired” by the divested one.

Thus, two identical account numbers, different routing numbers.

------
onatm
As someone who moved from Turkey to the UK 3 years ago, I could say that the
British Bank system is closer to non-existent. You can't make such silly
mistakes in the Turkish banking system because the system rejects the transfer
if the recipient's name is wrong/mistyped.

------
switch007
The solicitor should have sent £1, verified receipt, then sent the remainder.
IMHO quite negligent not to, especially as they should be aware of what
happens when mistakes are made.

~~~
dingaling
I agree. That's how I do transfers to new recipients and I'm only moving
three-figure sums. It adds some complexity but eliminates risk.

------
perl4ever
"Angered by the bank’s reply, Teich contacted the Guardian for help. We asked
it to reconsider his case, and in an almost immediate U-turn, it has now
agreed to pay all his legal fees, and has offered him £750 in compensation."

I dunno, this sounds fake.

Financial institutions make mistakes all the time, and if the scenario here
really did happen, what do you spend £46,000 on? Lawyers are expensive, but
they don't charge _that_ much to send a nasty letter. That's like months of
billable hours.

~~~
detaro
Getting apparently multiple court orders, as the article describes, is
probably a bit more work and fees than "send a nasty letter"

~~~
perl4ever
_Multiple_ court orders? Does the procedure involve large amounts of unmarked
bills for the British equivalent of a judge? £46,000 is obviously not "a bit
more" than the fee for writing a letter.

Why would someone assume the Guardian doesn't make up stories like these? Are
they more reliable than the Sun?

~~~
matthewheath
Not sure what the "British equivalent of a judge" is other than, well, a
judge.

Court claims are expensive. This ultimately would've been heard in the High
Court and the claimant would want decent counsel to represent him as well as a
team of solicitors and other legal professionals to research and handle the
correspondence — that's the bulk of the fees.

Then there's the cost of the application itself. The fee for starting a case
is 5% of the amount for claims worth between £10,000 and £200,000.

In this case, that's almost £10,000 gone immediately on the court fee. For one
case. There's also a court fee for the initial hearing and the return hearing
for the freezing order.

Not sure how £12k was spent on the first case—article doesn't mention which
court and suggests the High Court was only involved in the second case, but I
suspect that isn't true.

~~~
perl4ever
"The fee for starting a case is 5% of the amount for claims worth between
£10,000 and £200,000."

I don't believe it. If this was really the way the courts over there worked,
then nobody would make disparaging comments about the American legal system.

~~~
matthewheath
What's not to believe? You can look at the cost of filing a claim in the High
Court online for yourself.

I apologise for not making it clear — that fee is specifically for filing a
claim in the High Court. Inferior courts will charge less.

------
jotm
Yes, that's how it works in the UK. If you, yourself, enter someone's bank
details and send them money using a bank's online interface, you are
responsible. The bank can not just reverse that transaction. Best they can do
is contact the recipient and ask politely.

It's the cause of millions in fraud.

So, learn from this and double, triple, quadruple check what you enter every
time. It takes less than a minute and can save you from bigger headaches. Just
like wearing safety goggles.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Yes, that's how it works in the UK. If you, yourself, enter someone's bank
> details and send them money using a bank's online interface, you are
> responsible.

Except that you're not responsible. Peter Teich got his money restored using
only the UK legal system.

The process was:

1\. Sue the bank for the other customer's name.

2\. Sue the customer who received the payment.

3\. Recover from them. This recovery is (surprise!) enforcible by the bank.

If you were responsible for the consequences of sending money to an account
you specified incorrectly, none of that would be possible in the first place.

~~~
jotm
I've been in a similar situation, and the bank was adamant they could not do
anything beyond contacting the recipient. For £750, I won't bother with the
legal system, so that's a loss.

I do think it's a good system, if you want to recover your money, you can go
to court. Wish it was cheaper/faster/more straightforward to do that.

------
user5994461
Nice to see the legal system working mostly as intended. The person who
received money by mistake has to return it by law.

Given the specificity here, have to sue Barclays to find out whom did the
money go to. Barclays cannot take customer money without a court order or
disclose customer identity. Then sue the person to get the money back.

I think the lesson here is that person who tried to keep the money is a
dickhead. Moreover, it's really lucky that he didn't burn it all and was
insolvent.

~~~
lonelappde
I don't understand how this isn't prosecuted as criminal theft. In the US it's
not legal to keep something clearly sent by mistake, and it's not even legal
to keep a valuable thing you find in the street, if the owner comes looking
for it.

~~~
user5994461
It's not theft. The receiver didn't attempt to steal money, it was sent to him
without his knowledge or consent.

I guess it gets blurry when looking at it after the fact and he's been
formally refusing to return it for a year.

~~~
matthewheath
It is theft — S3 of the Theft Act 1968 covers the meaning of "appropriates" as
follows:

"Any assumption by a person of the rights of an owner amounts to an
appropriation, and this includes, where he has come by the property
(innocently or not) without stealing it, any later assumption of a right to it
by keeping or dealing with it as owner."

In this case, the person innocently came by the money as a result of a
mistaken bank transfer. They then proceeded to withdraw it from their account
and presumably spend it: thus keeping it and/or dealing with it as the owner
would—meaning they appropriated it accordingly.

All other elements seem to be made out here too: A person is guilty of theft
if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the
intention of permanently depriving the other of it; and “thief” and “steal”
shall be construed accordingly.

~~~
user5994461
Minor point, the article doesn't specify whether the money was withdrawn or
used.

The conclusion hints that it was returned, without making it clear. In the
absence of better information, I would assume that it wasn't used or
withdrawn, it couldn't have been returned if it were.

~~~
wil93
> Barclays knew where his £193,000 was sitting and, Teich says, knew when the
> recipient dishonestly began to withdraw the cash.

Doesn't it say that he "bagan to withdraw the cash" though?

------
alexfromapex
In the US this would be warrant a negligence tort lawsuit against the bank

------
jasonmp85
Wait these are the people who mock Americans for checks?

~~~
dfawcus
We still have and use Cheques.

If the Solicitor had instead posted a cheque to the heir, then the problem
likely would not have occurred, and if it had would have been reversed a lot
sooner.

------
DecoPerson
This is entirely a problem for the solicitor. The solicitor sent Mr. Teich's
money to the wrong person. Mr. Teich's act of giving the wrong info does not
let the solicitor give his money away to some stranger. Mr. Teich's is still
owed £193,000 by his solicitor.

The solicitor should use a more secure service for sending money. Something
that is harder to make a mistake and that provides better guarantees. For
example, a cheque, a money order, a professional money transfer service, hell,
even a Venmo transfer would be better, as you can send a QR code and that's
harder to mess up.

Having worked in a post office and having heard hundreds of stories about
dealing with corporations, I can confidently say that anything like this
should be done by registered mail with delivery confirmation. Digital
solutions simply aren't up to scratch yet. With any "interaction," there are
so many things that could go wrong: information mistakes, sorting mistakes,
lack of evidence when figuring out a problem, potential for identity theft,
potential for malicious actors to gain, potential for things to get lost, lack
of accountability, lack of insurance, etc

