She mistakenly received $50,000 from bank, kept it, and now reveals all on TikTok

It sounds too good to be true. A huge sum of money mysteriously landing in your bank account, changing your life out of the blue.

Well, that’s exactly what happened to Aprille Franks, Las Vegas resident who received an unexpected $50,000 deposit into her bank account - and was able to keep every single cent.

Franks told the astonishing story on her TikTok, revealing how she was able to use the huge windfall to buy a new car and house after her bank had failed to acknowledge the transaction error. Even better, she was able to do so legally.

How did she get the $50,000 payment?

Franks is an active TikToker and has gained thousands of followers on the video-based platform. In a recent post she revealed that, roughly 20 years ago, she received a letter making her aware than $50,000 was on its way to her bank account.

She had no idea where this mystery money came from and so immediately contacted friends and family to see if they had any knowledge. No one did.

In the recent viral video, Franks says that she called the bank to inform them of the error but the bank insisted that there had been no mistake. This was a legitimate payment, her bank told her, and that it had been meant for her. Still unsure about how to proceed, Franks contacted a lawyer to find out what this situation meant from a legal standpoint.

“I went and I saw a lawyer, because I was like ‘What am I supposed to do with this money?’” Franks explained. “What are my rights? What is the law?”

“And a lawyer told me exactly to do this. He said, ‘Report it again, document everything and don’t touch any of the money for 30 days’.”

She was also told to make a public post to alert people of the incident. If no one comes forward to claim in within 30 days, her legal adviser said, she would be free to keep it.

What did she do with the money?

Today, a $50,000 windfall would be a hugely significant amount for most people. At the time, it was truly life-changing for Franks. In the course of a number of follow-up videos posted on TikTok, she explains what she did with it.

“I bought a house, I bought a second house that we flipped and made $22,000, me and the guy that I was dating at the time,” she says.

But that was not all that she managed to do with the unexpected payment.

“I bought a car and we lived on it and I lived off that money, I was working full-time...making like $31,000 a year... It took me about a year and a half to spend all the money.”

Franks ends by saying that she did eventually get a call from the bank, admitting that there had been an error and that the payment was not actually intended for her. They asked for the money back.

But because she had reported it to the bank initially, and given them ample time to admit their mistake, she was free to keep the cash.

“I didn’t break the law and yeah I did get lucky,” Franks says in her TikTok videos. ”That’s how my life has been. Pretty f**king lucky”.