A faulty cash machine owned by Fortis Bank in Rotterdam allowed 20 homeless social security recipients to withdraw EUR100,000.
The ATM was hit by a computer glitch last Thursday night that allowed the recipients to withdraw an unrestricted amount of money from the machine, according to Dutch press reports.
The recipients were using a bank card issued by the Dutch social security department that usually only allows withdrawals of EUR140 per day, if there are enough funds in the account. The systems failure meant that account limits were not checked, allowing users to withdraw as much cash as they wanted.
According to Dutch newswire Expatica, the amounts withdrawn from the ATM mostly ranged between EUR400 and EUR18,000, although two homeless people did manage to withdraw a total of EUR33,000 from the faulty machine and have since disappeared.