31-year-old man accidentally sends $8.400 to ex-girlfriend, and she refuses to transfer the money back immediately, making him miss the closing date and lose a condo: ‘I’m following my bank’s instructions’

Author image for Olivia Arocena
Olivia Arocena • Writer and Editor
Aug 3, 2026 9:45 AM EDT

Revenge is a gift best served by a bank

Some of us fantasize about something like this happening to us so we can get revenge without planning. We have to be really intelligent to be presented with the chance and be quick enough to see it and take it. I've read countless stories about exes who benefited from their partners' kindness only to resent it afterwards. I guess it's a common attitude. People would like to forget the times in which they were vulnerable and will hate anyone who reminds them of it. I don't like to be alarmist, but beware. Try to keep an eye open for anyone who displays this kind of attitude. Some people see relationships primarily in terms of costs and benefits; we should be attentive if our partners tend to maintain relationships based on usefulness instead of affection, show gratitude only while they're dependent on us, and evaluate people according to what enhances their own image. All those traits are what we should be aware of if we don't want to end up with someone who benefits from our help, and when they're done needing it, pushes us aside to get something 'better'. We should observe how this person treats those considered less successful as opposed to those above them. It's also worth separating a change in compatibility from opportunism; of course, we don't see the whole picture; we only have one side of the story, but it never hurts to take care of oneself.

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  • woman holding money
    via Sasun Bunghdaryan

    The woman keeping the money

    Subject is a model

  • AIO for refusing to return the money my ex accidentally sent me after he publicly humiliated me?

    I (29F) dated Ryan (31M) for almost four years. We were talking about marriage, and I genuinely thought he was the person I'd spend my life with.
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  • About six months ago, he ended things completely out of nowhere. His exact words were, "I need someone who's more on my level financially." I was devastated because I'd
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  • supported him through grad school, covered rent when he was unemployed for almost five months and never once made him feel guilty about it.
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  • A week after the breakup, I found out he was already been seeing a woman from his office. They made their relationship public almost immediately.
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  • What hurt even more was that he kept making little comments online that seemed aimed at me. Things like, It's amazing. what happens when you stop settling and Some
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  • people are anchors disguised as partners. Mutual friends confirmed he was talking about me. I blocked him everywhere and spent months rebuilding my life.
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  • Fast forward to last week. I woke up to a bank notification showing that someone had transferred me $8,400. At first I thought it was fraud, but the sender's
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  • name was Ryan. About twenty minutes later, my phone started exploding with calls and texts from unknown numbers. Apparently he
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  • had meant to send the money as the down payment for a condo he was buying with his girlfriend. He accidentally
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  • selected my name because my account was still saved as a transfer recipient. Ryan finally emailed me
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  • because he realized I had him blocked. He apologized not for how he treated me but for the banking mistake.
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  • He asked me to immediately transfer the money back because the seller was waiting and he'd lose the condo if the payment didn't go through that day.
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  • I didn't respond. Instead, I called my bank to ask what I should do. They told me not to spend the money and not to move it until the bank
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  • completed its investigation, since reversing an electronic transfer isn't always straightforward and they needed documentation from both parties.
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  • So I left it alone. Ryan somehow got my mother's phone number and started calling my family, saying I was stealing from him.
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  • His girlfriend even messaged me saying, If you're still bitter over a breakup, just say that. That irritated me enough that I stopped feeling any urgency to help.
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  • I simply replied with one sentence: I'm following my bank's instructions. Over the next three days, Ryan missed his closing date and lost the condo.
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  • woman smiling
    via Vitaly Gariev

    The woman talking to the bank

    Representation

  • According to mutual friends, he also lost several thousand dollars in deposits and fees. Yesterday, the bank finished investigating and reversed the transfer themselves.
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  • The money left my account exactly as I expected. Now Ryan is telling everyone I intentionally delayed things to punish him. My sister agrees | should've ignored the
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  • bank and just sent it back immediately because it's the decent thing to do. My argument is simple, if I had transferred the money myself and something went wrong, I could have been responsible for
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  • thousands of dollars. I wasn't about to take financial advice from the same man who publicly mocked me after I supported him for years. I didn't spend a single cent. I didn't hide the
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  • money. I literally followed my bank's instructions. AIO?
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  • conditerite Didn't Mr Superior Financial Level have another $8,400 in some other account he could have used?
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  • Last_Society_177 NOR. Amazing. He got what he deserved
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  • one_two_three_boogie NOR- he could have reversed the payment and if you had sent him back the money, you'd be out 8k. He's proven he's not trustworthy so I wouldn't trust him not to reverse it anyway
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  • safe
    via Jason Dent

    The bank holding the ex-boyfriend's money

    Representation

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relationship advice relationships toxic relationship relationship drama
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