Depends on how much resources you have to fight for the money accidentally sent to you. It's more complex than this case but here's a good story here on how Citigroup accidently wired $900M to a group of hedge funds and eventually lost in court trying to get it back: https://archive.ph/PJH1m
Their first reaction was mostly “well this is weird, I guess Revlon decided to pay off the loan rather than fight about it.” Their second reaction, after Citi sent them frantic notices saying it was a mistake, was to send each other Bloomberg chat messages making fun of Citi. Their third reaction, after some more serious reflection, was to say “we are keeping the money, see you in court.” All of these reactions were pretty reasonable and worked out well for them.
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Depends on how much resources you have to fight for the money accidentally sent to you. It's more complex than this case but here's a good story here on how Citigroup accidently wired $900M to a group of hedge funds and eventually lost in court trying to get it back: https://archive.ph/PJH1m
Their first reaction was mostly “well this is weird, I guess Revlon decided to pay off the loan rather than fight about it.” Their second reaction, after Citi sent them frantic notices saying it was a mistake, was to send each other Bloomberg chat messages making fun of Citi. Their third reaction, after some more serious reflection, was to say “we are keeping the money, see you in court.” All of these reactions were pretty reasonable and worked out well for them.
They seem to have had an actual claim to the money in this case, though?
It's precisely because of that legitimate claim that they prevailed in court. So yeah, OPs example is bad.