A MAN who became an instant millionaire overnight couldn’t believe his luck when he spotted seven figures in his account.
Retired Michael Carpenter, who lives in Derbyshire, thought he had £120,000 invested in a fund with stocks firm Hargreaves Lansdown.
2
2
But he was astonished after logging into the app to spot his investments had soared by more than 2,200% overnight to a whopping £2.7 MILLION.
Michael, who has been investing in corporate bonds for several years, said he had to look “several times” at the enormous figure.
He said: “I was stunned really – I just thought, ‘Is this right?’
“I counted up all the digits just to be completely sure and realised it was into the millions.”
But before he could spend his £2,639,800 windfall, he realised something might be up and contacted the firm.
“You just live in hope of something like that happening,” he said.
Despite admitting he would like to spend the fortune on travelling the world, he was careful to report the figure – which has now been confirmed to be an error – and won’t be able to keep the money.
But Michael believes he might not be the only investor to wake up to an astonishing figure in his account.
Most read in The Sun
“Bonds can move, but it wouldn’t shift by that amount in a lifetime really,” he said.
“They do go up and down sometimes, but not nearly to that extent.”
Bonds are a type of investment, the price of which moves up and down based on supply and demand.
Bonds are debt, usually issued by a company. If you invest in the bond, the company pays interest on that debt for an agreed period and then should return the money at the end of the term, a bit like a mortgage.
The main risk with a bond is that the company defaults on the debt, in which case you would lose your money.
“I knew it couldn’t be right and there must have been an error somewhere along the line,” he said.
“It wasn’t as if I could have withdrawn it – Hargreaves Lansdown would notice and know something wasn’t right.
“Even if someone did try to get hold of the money they’d never get away with it. It would be theft.”
MILLIONAIRE FOR A DAY
Michael logged a complaint with Hargreaves Lansdown “straight away”.
He said: “To access that money if it was real, I’d have to sell some of my investment”.
“I wouldn’t be able to access the money in my account by going to a bank, because it’s tied up in the investment.”
Staff at Hargreaves Lansdown confirmed there was an issue.
“I spoke to a lady who put me on hold while she was speaking with someone else, and her colleague said it wasn’t the only problem like this,” he said.
“They’ve had other calls from people reporting the same thing, so there must be quite a big problem.”
The bond he invests in is for Wasps rugby club. This bond was issued in 2020 and promised to pay investors interest of 6.5 per cent.
That means, if you invested £1,000, you would earn interest of £65 a year.
Michael wouldn’t speculate on what he might have bought had the money been real, but he does play the Lottery – and would spend a pay-out on a second home in Europe.
A spokesman from Hargreaves Lansdown said: “An error in the data feed to clients’ accounts meant that the price of this particular line of stock was showing incorrectly – this has now been resolved.
“It was an isolated error, only affecting this bond holding.”
