ATM Customers Take the Money and Run

Your bank cash machine has gone berserk, giving out $20 bills as if they were fivers, yet your receipt shows no sign of overpayment.

Do you:

(a) Use the emergency telephone to alert the bank?

(b) Take the money and run?

(c) Call your friends to get down there, too?

If you chose the first option, you are a rare breed of cat, judging from an unintentional ethics experiment staged Sunday at a Manhattan bank branch.

Because some hapless employee loaded a canister of $20 bills into the slot for $5 bills, the First Federal Savings & Loan Assn. of Rochester’s branch at First Avenue and 14th Street launched an accidental exercise in income redistribution.

Although the cash machine panel has a 24-hour telephone for reporting problems outside bank hours, the response was not overwhelming--”one or two calls,” according to bank spokesman Robert Nolan.

Instead, a line of eager card holders quickly formed at the machine.

“I called everybody I knew,” a writer, who asked not to be identified for fear of prosecution, told New York Newsday.

An actor named Chris, who asked for $40 and received $160, was amused by the range of reactions: “One person let out a holler of joy. Another barely raised his eyebrows and sneaked out. One woman went into a tirade about how she’s getting back at the bank for money it owed her.”

The most a customer could ask for was $200--and get $800. Nolan said that although the bank’s audit was not finished, it appeared the automated teller overpaid a total “somewhat less than $5,000.”

But those who took advantages of the situation will not enjoy the fruits of the computer foul-up for long. Customers who cashed in on the mistake will have the windfall withdrawn from their accounts, bank spokesman Nolan said.