21-year-old Christine Jiaxin Lee got to live out everybody’s fantasy for close to a year between between July 2014 and April 2015. Westpac Bank located in Australia made the mistake of signing up Lee for an unlimited overdraft account right before she was to turn 18 nearly 4 years ago. No one was notified and soon Lee noticed that her account was a lot larger than she remembered, which sent things into wild territory according to News.AU:
Police allege between July 2014 and April last year, Ms Lee allegedly made withdrawals on numerous occasions that totalled $4,653,333.02 — of which $3.3 million was still “outstanding”.
Ms Lee was arrested on [May 4th] trying to fly to Malaysia after obtaining an emergency passport.
The funny part about the entire thing is that her boyfriend, Vincent King, allegedly denies even knowing Lee had access to the money during their 18-month relationship. Evidently she didn’t spend too much of the cash on him, opting instead to go for other pleasures:
Magistrate Lisa Stapleton raised doubts about whether Ms Lee’s alleged use of the money was a proceed of crime if the bank had “inadvertently” given her an overdraft facility that she then took advantage of.
“It isn’t proceeds of crime. It’s money we all dream of,” she said.
According to the Westpac website, a personal overdraft is an unsecured loan (up to an agreed limit) that forms part of your everyday Westpac Choice bank account.
When Ms Lee’s lawyer Fiona McCarron said the money was partly spent on luxury items such as expensive handbags, Ms Stapleton remarked: “That’s a lot of handbags.”
That is a lot of handbags. Non-illegal handbags. If I somehow got my hands on millions of dollars in my bank account, I’d pay any and all loans in my name and disappear. You’d never find me. I suppose Lee got that idea a bit late, but not before she decided to spend a ton of cash on handbags. You can take a look at the list below via The Sydney Morning Herald. It’s pretty insane to think that someone would spend more than $100 on a handbag, but it happened several times over.
What would you do with that kind of money?
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