When you are in the student government at a university, you sometimes put on events that then need to be reimbursed by the school.

What would you do if, after submitting a request for reimbursement, they gave you about $9000 too much?

That is what happened to the student in this story, and even after he tried to alert them to the problem, they wouldn’t fix it, so he kept the money.

Check it out.

My university told me to steal $9000 from them… so I did

This story is back from when I was attending university several years ago, pre-pandemic.

I was the president of school club, we had good attendance but limited interest in leadership positions.

I think this was largely due to being an LGBT organization and the university lists all university org officers on their website for anyone with internet access to see.

But anyway, that meant I was the only acting officer of this club making me the secretary and treasurer also.

The other “officers” were actually previous club presidents who had graduated, you just needed three student ID numbers to remain an active club.

I had planned a large ice cream social that went great!

I rented a ballroom on campus (free for student orgs), had ice cream catering, a live band, and almost 100 students in attendance.

It was a great way to begin the school year!

Anyway, it all cost something like $1,021.17 (not the actual amount, but something like that).

There were two methods to pay for this kind of thing: petition in advance for university funds or pay it yourself and submit a reimbursement after the fact.

What a hassle.

In the past, the school had taken 6 months to pay a vendor I used and it was a stressful experience because I wanted them to be paid, I felt terrible having to just keep saying “the university is working on it.”

Going to the student org finance office twice a week to ask them about it for months.

So, I figured I’d take the hit and wait for the funds myself, I could sweat it out on student loans and get the band and caterer paid in a timely fashion.

There’s a bunch of compliance paperwork to fill out, you have to submit itemized receipts, etc. etc.

Long story short it’s a process. But I got it all filed and I waited.

About 4 months later I got an email prompting me of an activity in the student org finance portal to approve a direct deposit to my account.

You have to confirm the amount.

I wish I’d been drinking water because I would have spat it out dramatically, but the amount was for $10,211.70.

They had clearly just misplaced the decimal point.

I could “accept” or “comment” on it so I wrote that the amount should have been $1,021.17.

In an hour I got a response back, along the lines of “yes, the amount is $10211.70.”

…so I responded “no, it should be $1021.17.”

This is not complicated.

And the response was that she “couldn’t find an issue.”

Now look, I’m terribly dyslexic.

(as in I actually am, I sometimes have to clarify this because it seems to be a quirky thing people without a learning disability say to play off a mistake)

I was genuinely thinking maybe I misreading it and causing her to be confused?

Maybe for who knows why the computer put three numbers after the decimal so I was reading $1021.170 and thinking I saw $10211.70 or something.

I had a friend look at it and she confirmed I was, in fact, reading it correctly.

But hey, maybe the lady in the finance office was also dyslexic?

Or overworked?

Or could care less to actually look?

He is doing everything he can.

Whatever the case, I can explain myself better in person so I walked down to the office.

I was a regular at this point.

There was hardly ever a line because nearly everything is done online.

So, I go up to the desk and say theres been a mistake on a reimbursement request for a club event.

I’m told to have a seat and she’ll chat with me in a moment.

So I waited for about half an hour while she sat on her iPhone at the desk, then she calls me up.

I explain I was over-reimbursed and she says, “look, as I’ve told you, there’s nothing wrong”

So I said, “but it’s off by a decimal place.”

She kind of just sighed and said she could deny the reimbursement or I could accept it and leave.

She really doesn’t want to look into this.

She seemed to be getting very upset with me, probably because I was constantly asking her the previous year about the payment for that vendor.

I said I would accept it and left.

When you “accept” you can make a comment so I basically typed in the comment box that I tried to remedy the situation and was told there was no issue repeatedly, over chat and in person, and then was threatened to not be reimbursed at all.

I took screenshots of all the messages in case I had to defend myself.

After a few business days the money was direct deposited into my bank account the university has on file for tuition/student loans.

I let it sit there for a couple years while I was a student, expecting them to find the error and demand the money back.

Wow, that is very generous.

When I was getting close to graduating and that never happened, I gave the money to a member in my club who’s parents stoped paying his tuition because he started testosterone.

They pulled funds past the deadline for federal student loans and obviously wouldn’t co-sign for private loans.

Interestingly enough, for any events over $15k you had to file invoices in advance and have it pre-approved.

Anything under that they recommend you do this but you can be reimbursed with proper receipts and paperwork.

I think that’s why it didn’t raise any alarms in the computer system.

At least that’s all I can reason.

I would think that by now, he is pretty safe.

It kind of haunts me to this day that I might randomly owe $9k at some point.

And I just don’t understand what I was saying wrong that she couldn’t understand me, and I worry I should have gone to her supervisor.

But I was 19 so I just did as I was told.

It sounds like he did everything reasonable to fix this and they wouldn’t listen.

Let’s see what the people in the comments say about it.

Here is someone who worked in financial aid at a college.

This commenter says they can’t really get the money now.

Oh, this person makes a good point.

This might have helped.

This person has worked in finance and says it isn’t likely to come back to bite him.

Wow, that worked out perfectly.

Who couldn’t use some extra cash?

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