NEED TO KNOW
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Shawna Flener discovered $8.7 million mistakenly wired into her Fidelity Investments account in June 2024
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Flener tells PEOPLE that the error was because the mystery sender typed in an incorrect account number
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The 38-year-old’s viral social media post about the experience sparked debate over what people would do in her situation
It was a typical morning in June 2024 when Shawna Flener checked her Fidelity Investments account; however, what she saw was far from the norm.
Sitting in her account was over $8.7 million, but the 38-year-old tells PEOPLE the money was not hers. A mysterious sender had seemingly typed the wrong account number before sending the multi-million dollar wire transfer, which landed in her hands.
“I called Fidelity pretty much immediately. It was just my gut instinct,” she says. “I remember I was in the office at the time of noticing the money, and I just sat there in shock for a few minutes before calmly getting up and excusing myself to go call them.”
Flener says the representative she spoke with at Fidelity “was flabbergasted” and said that “he had never seen something like it.”
Shawna Flener bank statement.
Credit: Courtesy Shawna Flener
“He asked me if I was sure the money was not mine, which made me laugh,” she adds. “I assured him I did not have $8 million nor did I know anyone who had $8 million.”
The representative told her that he would “alert the appropriate team to investigate, but generally, wire transfers were final.” Despite initial hope that she might get to keep the money, Flener knew it likely wasn’t the reality.
Still, she asked if she “could buy stocks with it,” since the money was transferred directly into her brokerage account, so she “wouldn’t have even needed to transfer the money to another account in order to invest those funds.” However, she says he kindly asked her not to, as it would just “make things more complicated.”
While the financial company tried to get to the bottom of things, Flener couldn’t help but stare at the Fidelity app all day, stunned by the $8,786,167.73 in her account.
Flener admits she never found out who sent the money, but Fidelity eventually withdrew the funds from her account later that day, about seven hours after she first noticed.
“I got an email from their customer care team a few days later saying my account number had been entered incorrectly at the initiation — it did not come from within Fidelity’s system,” she shares. “I really wish I knew more.”
Shawna Flener.
Credit: Courtesy Shawna Flener
In hindsight, Flener tells PEOPLE she wishes she hadn’t called Fidelity “right away” and “would have let it sit for a while longer to see what happened.”
“That’s not me saying I would have fled the country and embraced life as a fugitive or anything like that — even though it was certainly fun to fantasize about doing exactly that!” she says. “It was much more exciting to discuss those ideas when you actually have the funds at your hands to be able to pull it off.”
“I have that brokerage account’s default position set to a money market fund, which means if the $8 million sat there for even a full day, it would have automatically invested,” she continues. “I expect when the mistake was initially realized, they would have taken back the interest it earned as well, but who knows. It would have been more fun to see how that played out and how long it took.”
Thankfully, she says there weren’t any long-term repercussions from the mistake, such as tax issues.
Flener recently posted a social media video about the “wild” experience, joking that when she looks back and “thinks about regrets that I have in life, I’m pretty sure I will always remember June 28, 2024.”
“That was the day that Fidelity incorrectly wired $8.7 million into my bank account and my noble ass called them to let them know that there had been some mistake and to let me know what I needed to do to help resolve the situation and get that money back to whoever needed it,” she said in the video, which has amassed over 2.5 million views.
“I’m just gonna go out on a limb and say that whoever was wiring $8.7 million and didn’t even take the time of day to make sure that that was processed correctly — because we did find out that they had messed something up — probably didn’t need that money that bad,” she added.
Flener, who typically shares book reviews on her social media channels, says she has been a “mix of stunned and amused” by the responses online.
“Seeing how many people are fascinated by the ‘what would you do if $8 million suddenly appeared in your account’ scenario has been really fun,” she tells PEOPLE. “The three main camps seem to be people who thought I did the right thing, people who would have fled the country and people who would have wound up in jail.”
Fidelity Investments did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
Read the original article on People
