Is it a crime for a bank teller to mistakenly deposit 10,000 into their own account?
After transferring 120,000 yuan into a fixed deposit at a bank, depositor Ms. Yang discovered that only 110,000 yuan had actually been credited to her account. When Ms. Yang checked, she found that one transaction of 10,000 yuan had gone into the personal account of the teller who handled the transaction for her. On February 10, the bank's person in charge explained that the teller had by no means intentionally deposited the money into her own account, but had accidentally used her own bank card as the receiving account for one of the transfers due to an operational error.
Ms. Yang once contacted the bank lobby manager to get to the bottom of it. After a brief investigation, the truth finally came to light: the 1 yuan had been transferred to another account, and the owner of that account was Ms. Wang, the bank teller who had just handled the transaction for Ms. Yang. "The bank then reversed the transaction for me and transferred the 1 yuan back into my account," Ms. Yang said.
On the 10th, the reporter saw the personal business transaction slip (reversal). Handwritten under the reason for reversal was: The teller entered the wrong card number for the transfer, hence the reversal. The bank manager explained to the reporter that day: “Our bank staff would absolutely never intentionally transfer a depositor’s money into their own account. Everyone can rest assured on this point.”
(Huashang Daily)
Whether or not a crime is committed depends on intent.
Whether the bank teller, Ms. Wang, has violated criminal law depends on whether her actions were intentional. First, it does not constitute embezzlement. This money is not company property, but someone else's property. Therefore, it falls outside the scope of this crime.
Second, covertly taking someone else's property constitutes theft, but it still depends on whether the teller acted intentionally: if it was intentional, it constitutes theft; if it was an operational error, although it does not violate criminal law, the unjust enrichment must be returned to the depositor. Whether intent existed requires investigation and determination by the public security authorities.
