TikTokers Try To Exploit Viral Bank ‘Glitch,’ Face Huge Risk

A new TikTok trend in which users attempt to exploit a “glitch” in Chase Bank ATMs for “infinite free money” has been met with a huge cost.

Videos shared on the popular social media platform urged customers to deposit fake checks for large sums of money, supposedly glitching the system to credit some of the deposits to customers’ accounts before the checks cleared. Experts, however, said the “glitch” appears to fall along the lines of check fraud, one of the most well-known scams to banks, and Chase quickly fixed the bug, giving out significant punishments to the hackers.

“We are aware of this incident, and it has been addressed. Regardless of what you see online, depositing a fraudulent check and withdrawing the funds from your account is fraud, plain and simple,” a spokesperson said via the New York Post.

Several users who took advantage of the glitch found their accounts were locked and hit with large negative balances, including one user who shared a post revealing that their deductions labeled “ATM deposit error” resulted in nearly $40,000 lost.

Jim Wang, a financial educator, warned that hackers who “took advantage” of the “Chase Bank glitch” would eventually face serious consequences after other users previously shared their exuberance over the bank hack.

“So what people discovered over the last few days was that Chase was having problems with their ATMs. They were able to deposit checks and get the balances and were able to withdraw them,” Wang said via the New York Post. “Chase was pretty on top of it, within a day it was all fixed and the people that were doing this were seeing big holds in their accounts or huge negative balances.”

“In the case of this ‘glitch,’ it was just check fraud. You’re going to get in huge trouble if you do something like this,” he added.

Wang reiterated that customers should notify their bank immediately if a large amount of money shows up on their account due to a bank error.

“Just because money appears in your account, doesn’t mean it’s literally yours,” he said. “If you spend it and are forced to pay it back, you’re going to have to figure out a way to pay it back.”