Florida Woman Finds $1Billion Deposited Into Her Bank Account

Jun 24, 2021 by apost team

Have you ever dreamed of waking up to find a billion dollars in your bank account? This turned out to be one woman’s reality, and she saw it as a nightmare. Julia Yonkowski is from Largo, a city west of Tampa, Florida and in June, 2021 she had the surprise of her life when her account balance read $999,985,855.94 while she thought she only had $20.

While using an ATM, Yonkowski was alerted that if she withdrew $20 she would overdraft her account and she would have to pay a penalty. She decided not to take out the money and checked her account balance instead. That is when she found that almost a billion dollars had been deposited into her account somehow. 

Yonkowski left her account alone all of that Saturday when she discovered the money. On that Sunday she tried to get in contact with Chase bank, but no one was available to take her call. Yonkowski began to panic, as having that much money, that wasn’t hers, in her bank account made her anxious. She desperately wanted to give the money back.

The woman had to wait until Monday, June 21, 2021, to find out what had happened. As you can imagine, Yonkowski was extremely shocked to see such an outrageous number on her bank statement. The Florida woman said every time she tries to get through to Chase bank she gets tied up in their automated system. She was hopeful she could reach a real person during weekday business hours.

Ordinarily, you would think finding a huge amount of money in your bank account would be a good thing, but Yonkowski did not see it that way. “Oh my God, I was horrified. I know most people would think they won the lottery but I was horrified,” she told the WFLA news team.

She continued explaining, “When I put in for the $20, the machine came back and said we’ll give you the $20 but that’ll cause an overdraft and you will be charged and I said, ‘Oh just forget it.'”

Yonkowski knew there would be consequences if she tried to withdraw any of the money that didn’t belong to her. “I know I’ve read stories about people that took the money or took out money, and then they had to repay it and I wouldn’t do that anyway because it’s not my money,” she said.

Yonkowski was concerned that there may be a larger threat involved in the situation. “It kind of scares me because you know with cyber threats. You know I don’t know what to think,” she shared.

On Tuesday morning, June 22, 2021 WFLA spoke with a representative from Chase bank that said the balance was actually a negative number. They shared that this is a fraud prevention method meant to freeze the customer’s account. It turns out, Yonkowski’s husband had recently passed away and was a joint owner of the account, so it was flagged when she attempted to use it. The woman said she hopes her story can help educate other people. 

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