Clerical error gave Dallas couple $37 million in their bank account — for a few hours

When Ruth Balloon logged into the LegacyTexas Bank app on her phone Tuesday evening to check her account balance, the first thing she noticed was all the zeroes. There were far too many zeroes.

“I was like, ‘What is this?’ At first I thought it was like $37,000, which still (is) a lot,” said Ruth, a 35-year-old resident of the Dallas suburb of Rowlett. “But then I started counting the zeroes. And I was like, ‘Oh my goodness.’”

It was $37 million, not $37,000.

Holding her 4-month-old boy in her arms in her kitchen, Ruth tried to make sense of the unfathomably large sum of money dropped into her account. It must have been some millionaire who put a deposit into the wrong account, she assumed. “Whoever is waiting for this $37 million,” she remembers thinking, “is going to be upset.”

She sent a screenshot of their account balance to her husband, Brian Balloon, 39, who happened to be at their son’s elementary school for a pajama-night event where the kids wear PJs and play games. He had to take a moment to process what he was seeing.

“I got the text message from Ruth saying, ‘Hey, do you know there’s $37 million in our bank account?’” he said. “I was like, ‘What?’”

His immediate reaction was this was quite strange, and after considering some elaborate scenarios — like what if someone had made a big mistake with their money laundering scheme — he knew he had to figure it out with the bank. He called their representative at LegacyTexas, who was able to say fairly quickly and with confidence this was a clerical error.

In the coming days, as bank representatives apologized to them multiple times and explained more clearly how this had happened, their story spread online and captured the imagination of those who wondered what they would do with a cool $37 million. It was first reported on KTVT-TV (Channel 11) but was picked up by other news outlets.

Ruth, a Romanian immigrant, and Brian, a native of California, never thought the money was real, even if they “maybe wished it for a little bit,” Brian said.

But they’ve enjoyed their week as the overnight millionaires.

“For me, it’s been a positive experience, and kind of really unexpected because it stayed all over the news,” Ruth said over the phone Saturday. “I never really thought that I would be on TV.”

Samuel Bistrian, the CEO of the Dallas-based rubber boot company Roma Boots, was the one who reached out to KTVT-TV to tell them about the couple’s bizarre story, Ruth said. She works as an operations manager at the company, she said, and he — like all her colleagues — was baffled and bemused by her story Wednesday morning.

LegacyTexas sent a statement to the station explaining the deposit was the result of a representative erroneously entering her account number into the deposit field. Earlier in the week, Ruth said she had brought in $1,300 in Canadian money — a gift from her father — to be converted into American dollars and put into her account. All foreign currency transactions have to be manually entered, LegacyBank said in the statement

The bank noted to KTVT-TV the error would have been caught during evening processing and its systems are sound.

A memorable mistake

Ruth and Brian said they noticed the money was removed from their account hours after Brian spoke with the representative Tuesday night. But the fact that $37 million was deposited into their account and swiftly removed still shows up on their app, a reminder of the memorable day.

The whole week has been memorable for the couple, both of whom said they’ve heard their fare share of jokes from friends, family and co-workers. A friend of Ruth’s from Indiana, where she and Brian used to live, texted her that since she’s now a millionaire, he wanted to let her know he would like a 2024 Ford Ranger and a 2024 Ford Escape.

“And I said, ‘Your wish has been logged,’” Ruth said with a laugh.

Though Brian admits he wishes they had received some sort of finder’s fee for bringing the mistake directly to the bank, he said representatives have kept in contact with them and asked if they have any questions. Their main concern, Brian said, is that a deposit as unusually large as $37 million didn’t set off some type of alarm.

A customer service technical analyst for Athenahealth, Brian said he was curious how a modern banking system like this could have no fail-safes.

“There’s no alert or anything on their banking side,” he wondered, “that says, ‘No, it is a lot of money to print into an amount area for a personal account?’”

Even with their worries about the security and management of their account, Brian and Ruth have a sense of humor about the mistake and know it led to a story they’ll always remember. They said they’ve even heard from a producer from a major television show who’s interested in an interview, though they didn’t want to reveal the name of the show since it’s all preliminary.

The couple’s been together for 13 years, after they hit it off online while Ruth was in Romania and she came to America in 2006.

They said they didn’t really spend time thinking about what they would do with the $37 million since it never really seemed real.

But Ruth knows what she would do.

“I would pay off our mortgage, I’d pay off a couple of our friend’s mortgages and then I’d invest in real estate,” she said.

Brian said he thinks that sounds pretty good.

“I hadn’t even gotten to that point where I thought about, ‘What am I gonna do with it?’” he said. “What my wife says sounds like a very sound thing to do.”

This story was originally published December 15, 2019 at 3:40 PM.