NEW YORK — A new TikTok trend has people posting their attempts to exploit a “glitch” in Chase Bank ATMs that offers “infinite free money” — but quickly learning that a bank and its money are not so easily parted.
Experts say the “glitch” videos look an awful lot like check fraud — one of the oldest scams in the book.
Videos urging customers at the bank to take advantage of the “glitch” quickly took off online, prompting people to deposit fake checks for large sums of money.
The glitch would credit some of the sham deposits to the customers’ accounts before the checks cleared.
One video showed people lined up outside Chase locations in New York City, allegedly looking to take advantage of the “viral glitch to get free money,” one person wrote on X.
But Chase quickly fixed the bug, and is clawing back any money doled out to people who didn’t deserve it.
A spokesperson for Chase Bank said consumers should be skeptical and if something seems too good to be true, it likely is.
“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,” the spokesperson added.
The people who took advantage of the glitch were soon reporting that their accounts were locked and hit with massive negative balances.
One user posted deductions labeled “ATM deposit error” totaling nearly $40,000.
For a short window when the exploit seemed to work, clueless social media users were exuberant.
Chase customers shared videos of themselves dancing with joy and throwing handfuls of bills into the air right outside a Chase Bank in Yonkers.
One clip shows a joyful bunch cruising with their heads sticking out a car’s window and their Chase cards in their mouths.
Jim Wang, a financial educator, explained the trouble with “Chase Bank glitch” mania — and warned that those who “took advantage” of the issue will face serious consequences.
“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.
“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.”
Wang continued: “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.”
Wang reiterated that if a large amount of money shows up in your bank account as a result of a bank error, customers should tell their bank immediately.
“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.”
Another expert and CEO of the Bloom Institute of Technology Austen Allred also took to social media to debunk the trend.
“So the ‘Chase unlimited money glitch’ that went viral on TikTok was: Writing yourself a giant check, mobile depositing that check, going to an ATM to withdraw cash before the check cleared … Literally just committing check fraud,” he wrote.
By ISABEL KEANE/New York Post