Story Archive

Windfall

“Do NOT spend this money,” the president of the New York City, N.Y., Police Sergeants’ Union told members. The city’s Financial Information Services Agency accidentally dropped $12,000, less taxes, into the bank accounts of 31,019 retired police officers and firefighters — by accident. The total: $298,475,644. “In order to ensure that computer instructions are correct, FISA reuses existing automated payment process instructions copied into a test environment,” the agency said, but employees accidentally did the “testing” on the live system. “If you could measure how many NYPD retirees went to the Harley shop, Bass Pro Shop or any of the major casinos, versus any other day,” one retired cop said, “I believe there would be a significant surge in those numbers.” The city said the transactions would be reversed by the end of the same day. And if any accounts have been drained of the money in the meantime? “We’re going to cross that bridge when we get to it,” said a spokesman for the city’s comptroller’s office. (RC/New York Times) ...Actually, they’ll jump that bridge on their new Harleys.
Original Publication Date: 25 May 2014
This story is in True’s book collections, in Volume 20.

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