A couple were left gobsmacked when they woke up to find a staggering £11 million in their bank account, but it wasn’t all as it seemed.
Richard Warnock, who works as a builder, and his wife Jacqueline, a nursery worker, thought they had “hit the jackpot” after a banking error resulted in them receiving the huge sum.
The couple, who have been customers of global investment company Abrdn for five years, were shocked to see a massive £8.3m in Richard’s account and £2.5m in Jacqueline’s on Wednesday morning (March 20).
Richard, 56, told the Daily Record: “For a couple of hours there, I thought this might be real and we’d hit the jackpot! It was like winning the EuroMillions! My heart was racing when I saw the cash. We had already started thinking about how we would spend it.”
He said he thought it “might be a mistake” until he noticed his wife’s account was up too, reports the Manchester Evening News.
“We started thinking one of our company investments had gone through the roof overnight as is the nature with the stock market and this could be genuine,” he added. The couple, who have two children, use their accounts for a self-invested private pension and a Stocks and Shares ISA.
The couple, who have two children, use their accounts for a self-invested private pension and a Stocks and Shares ISA. Richard was shocked when he saw a lot of money in his account, but it stayed the same for hours so he thought he was suddenly rich.
But then they found out it was just a computer mistake. Richard said: “When we found out that there had been a mistake, my heart just sank. I’d really gotten my hopes up.
“We still don’t know how it all really happened. Abrdn haven’t been in touch. We were told about the error through our financial advisor”.
“I’m sure we are not the only ones out there who thought we were millionaires for a couple of hours. “Later, they fixed the accounts and the money went back to about £500,000. This wrong price affected some other people with investments too.
A person from abrdn explained: “There was an error in the intra-day fund price data feed we receive from a third party. This related to a small number of funds from one external fund manager.
“The result was that an error appeared on our system for a short period of time on Wednesday 20 March.
“The issue lay with the company who supply share price data to platforms across the market, including abrdn. Our BAU processes identified the error which was then raised with the third-party provider who fixed the issue.
“Values are now showing correctly on our systems. There has been no impact on any customer holdings.
“We regret any problems this may have caused for the Financial Advisers who use our platform and their clients. abrdn is an adviser facing platform and therefore it is right and proper that our interactions on issues such as this would be with the adviser not the customer.”
