Man's Debit Card Charged $23 Quadrillion, $15 Overdraft Fee

Mysterious Bank Debit Leaves Josh Muszynski Bewildered

POSTED: 12:24 am EDT July 15, 2009
UPDATED: 11:05 am EDT July 15, 2009

"If it were to be true that someone actually compromised that money and got that money, they could do some severe damage with that amount of money," he said.

 Muszynski expected to see a couple hundred dollars in his account, but a 17-digit number that rivals even th national debt confronted him instead. The mistake alarmed Muszynski, who has downsized to an apartment in efforts to save money to buy a house.

"I thought my card had been compromised. I thought somebody had bought Europe with my credit card," Muszynski said. "It was very concerning."

What Did He Buy?

 Muszynski swiped his debit card at a local Mobil gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes for a few bucks, Instead, his Bank of America account indicated he spent $23,148,855,308,184,500 at the gas station -- an amount for which he probably could have used to buy the entire company.

No One Could Answer Mysterious Charge

Hours later, after checking his account, Muszynski rushed back to the store but it appeared no one knew what to tell him. He wondered whether to call a debt relief company or how he'd pay it all off.

"The cashier says she couldn't help me at all. She didn't know anything about it," Muszynski said. "It's a lot of money in the negative, something I could never ever afford to pay back -- my children couldn't afford, grandchildren, nothing like that."

Muszynski called the bank about the string of numbers on the screen and a $15 overdraft fee the bank tacked on to his mysterious debt. After two hours on the phone, Muszynski said, the representative on the line had no idea what to say.

"She just tried to assure me that everything would be fixed, and I couldn't see something like that being fixed," Muszynski said.

Nearly 24 hours after the hole formed in his bank account, Muszynski checked his statement again. The bank corrected his statement a day later.

"It was back to normal. They reversed the negative balance fee, which was nice," Muszynski said.

WMUR News 9 contacted Bank of America about the statement mishap, but representatives said the card issuer, Visa, could only answer questions. Visa, in turn, recommended that WMUR News 9 contact the bank.

http://www.wmur.com/video/20057080/index.html