Thread: Surcharge

... A funny thing about bank cards and ... Bank of America.

Another funny story about Bank of America which was used as a case study when I was studying accountancy in Australia in the late 1960's and again when I was doing graduate studies in the USA in the 1980's.

Boeing in Seattle used computers in the design of their first commercial jet, the B707, and built up a large programming team in the days when most programming was done in binary and octal. Plane designed, they laid off a pile of engineers and programmers.

Meanwhile, the ever progressive Bank of America headquartered in San Francisco was one of the first financial companies to invest in a computer. Early mainframes were very tempermental and fragile, so they located their hardware up in the mountains in Denver, Colorado. There were lots of trained but unemployed programmers in Seattle, so hire them and why bother moving them to San Francisco or Denver. So you had this "dispersed" facility with management in San Francisco, hardware in Denver and programmers in Seattle.

Next, imagine how many times a bank computer calculates an interest charge, and then rounds the amount to the nearest cent. One enterprising programmer changed the program so that it always truncated - rounded the interest charge downwards - and shuffled the fractions of a cent off to his own account. A few million half and quarter cents soon adds up to $$$$. He got over $200,000 before discovery - probably equivalent to several million today.

Case 1. He was charged in San Francisco, California with stealing $200,000+. His lawyer just said: "My client has not physically been in California for several years, the computers are in Colorado, there is no evidence that any alleged crime happened in the state of California. Case dismissed.

Case 2. (A few years later) Identical charges, but under federal law. Lawyer - "My client denies the charges. I must note that he has been charged with stealing $200,000+, but no evidence has been advanced about that amount. All evidence has been about lots of miniscule amounts....." Case dismissed.

Case 3. (A few more years later) He was charged with multiple counts of stealing fractions of a cent totalling $200,000+. Lawyer - "My client denies the charges. I must note that he has been charged with stealing $200,000+ from Bank of America, but no evidence has been submitted that those alleged monies ever belonged to that bank. The evidence suggests that the alleged sums actually belonged to multiple clients of the bank." Case dismissed.

Case 4. (A few more years later) The bank leaned on its staff, their families and friends and persuaded a few thousand to make claims. He was charged with multiple counts of stealing fractions of a cent totalling ~$5,000 from many individuals. Lawyer - "My client denies the charges. I must note that the largest amount my client has been accused of stealing is 0.99 cents and the average amount is a mere 0.5 cents. The Currency Act says that the smallest unit of curreny in these United States is one cent. How can my client be accused of stealing an amount that legally does not exist?" Case dismissed.

I do not know whether there was a Case 5.

I suppose no one cares but...


I have 2 accounts and debit cards associated with each.


I keep enough money in one to deal with transactions and the bulk of my money in the other protected in various ways.


I withdraw a signifigant amount of cash periodically and use it to pay in person whenever I can. The debit card is my backup and for online transactions.


I can still get robbed but my exposure is contained.

It was 1974. We had moved from Ohio to Pennsylvania. I had relatives who HE was rather successful as a sales rep. She would send the Christmas news letter telling how they were spending their money. The typical, this kid has been ordained, this kid graduated from Ivy League school is is whatever, etc.

My two kids were barely in school at the time. I wrote a Christmas letter that my wife refused to allow me to send. It had a few very offensive lines in it.

One of them was .... was working as a programmer for 'this Pennsylvania' electric company. He created a company name and skimmed the the fractional pennies off of customer electric bills. The skim was paid to the company name he created. We now have $37 million in an offshore account in Brazil. The movers are coming next week. Does anyone know of good a school district in Rio de Janeiro?