The Casino Bartender Who Found an Infinite Money Glitch in Real Life transcript

Wangaratta Australia, a Tuesday night in a little bar in the middle of town. A Tuesday night, it's raining. You're watching a slightly drunk 29-year-old bartender walk away from a bar. His name is Dan Saunders. It's his round of drinks and his wallet is empty. So, he's looking for an ATM. [music] There's one problem. His bank account is $2,000 in the red. That doesn't stop him. He finds the machine. He puts his card in anyway.

He tries to move $200 from his credit card over to his savings account. The screen flashes. Transaction canceled. The card pops back out on its own. He puts it in again. This time, he asks for $200 in cash and the machine gives him $200. He shrugs, puts the money in his pocket, walks back [music] to the bar. He has no idea what just happened. He just found an infinite money glitch and he is about to figure it out. Over the next 4 and 1/2 months, this bartender is going to take $1.6 million out of one of the biggest banks in Australia without hacking anything, without stealing a card, without lying to a single [music] person.

This is the story of a man who found unlimited money. >> [music] >> But, the man who found unlimited money wasn't some lucky guy who stumbled into it. Dan Saunders was a gambling addict and it was the casino that made him one. He'd spent 11 years working inside Melbourne's Crown Casino and somewhere in there, he stopped being staff and became a customer. He'd even tried to escape it. He followed his fiance to Wangaratta, a tiny town 3 hours from the nearest casino to start clean.

It didn't work. The pub he tended had a betting terminal right on the counter. By that rainy Tuesday in 2011, he had $3 in savings and a credit card 2,000 in the red. So when he woke up the next morning and found $2,000 in cash bulging in his wallet, money that in his [music] words was real but didn't come from anywhere, he didn't panic. He didn't hide it. He did the one thing a gambler always does with money he wasn't expecting.

For the next 48 hours, Dan Saunders tries to double his money. He doesn't spend it. He doesn't save it. He doesn't hide it. He bets it on horses, on sport. Anything he can put money on, he does. And he does what every gambler in history does when they walk into a bookmaker with cash they weren't expecting. He loses all of it. Two days later, he's standing in his house with an empty wallet again, still owing the bank the $2,000 he pulled from that machine.

He should feel worse than before, but [music] he doesn't. Because there's one very specific thought running through his head. If it worked once, it might work again. So late that night in the same rain, Dan walks back to the same ATM. But this time, before he tries anything, he checks his accounts. And he notices something he missed the first night. His savings account is deep in the red. The withdrawals have caught up with him.

That part makes sense. But his credit card, the account the machine was supposedly pulling all that money from, hasn't moved at all. Not by a single dollar. And that's when [music] it clicks. The money two nights ago didn't come off his credit card. It didn't really come from anywhere. The machine had simply handed him $2,000 that, as far as the bank's system [music] was concerned, never existed. Dan Saunders stands there in the rain and understands something for the first time.

There is a bug in this machine. And right now, he is the only person in the world [music] who knows about it. The question is, how big is it? Bigger than he could have imagined. The cash machine caps out at a thousand dollars a day, but the transfer between his own accounts has almost no limit at all. He can move up to 999,000 dollars in a single press of a button. And after trying it at different hours, night after night, he works [music] out the one rule that makes it work.

The glitch only opens in a narrow window >> [music] >> between midnight and 3:00 in the morning. Outside those hours, the machine behaves normally. So, now Dan Saunders has a machine that will give him almost unlimited money. The obvious question is, what does he do with it? His first problem is a practical one. The ATM will move a million dollars into his savings account, but it will only hand him a thousand dollars in actual cash a day.

He needs a way to get the big money out. So, he walks into an actual National Australia Bank branch during the day and asks to withdraw cash over the counter. 10,000 dollars, 20,000, and the tellers just count it out and hand it over. Because as far as their screens are concerned, the money is really sitting in his account. Now, he has everything he needs. The ATM at night to top the account up, the branch by day to pull out real cash.

And this is the moment where you find out who Dan Saunders really is. Because a normal person handed a machine like this would use it to fix their life, pay off debts, [music] buy a house, set themselves up for good. Dan Saunders does the one thing he has always done. He gambles. He goes straight back to the betting terminal at the bar where he works, and he starts placing bets. Bigger and bigger ones. Not because it makes any sense.

He can already make unlimited money, but because he is a gambler. And for the first time in his life, there is no limit behind him. Within about a month, he has lost $60,000 on horses and sport. One good day, he wins 40,000 of it back. Then he loses that, too. Think about how strange that is. He has a money machine in his hometown, [music] and he is still down 60 grand. The glitch didn't make Dan rich and calm. It just handed his gambling problem an unlimited budget.

He's doing exactly what he did before he found the ATM, losing at the tab. Only now the numbers are 20 times bigger. But the gambling isn't even the trap. The machine is. Because every dollar he pulls out, the bank's [music] system eventually notices. About 24 hours after each transfer, the system reverses it, and his savings account drops back into the red. If it drops too far, the bank freezes the account automatically.

And the second that happens, the whole thing is over. So Dan can never stop going back. Every single night, after midnight, he has to walk to a machine and transfer in slightly more than he spent that day, just to keep the account looking normal. He keeps a running total in his head of exactly how much he owes. He calls it his ledger. Miss one night, and it ends. That is the real trap of the glitch. He hasn't found free money.

He has found a second job, one that runs from midnight to 3:00 in the morning, seven nights a week, that he can never take a night [music] off from. And for the first few weeks, he manages it perfectly, until his gambling gets him caught, and not by the bank. Because Dan is placing all of these huge bets on the betting terminal at his own workplace. And in a single week, he puts more money through that one terminal than the entire pub earns in a month.

The betting company notices immediately. They call his boss. Dan is called into the office and sat down in front of a TAB compliance officer who asks him where all the money is coming from. It doesn't really matter what he says. He is fired on the spot and banned from working in any venue with a betting terminal in the country for a year. That happens on a Thursday morning. By lunchtime, in a town of 29,000 people, his fiance has heard.

She doesn't know about the glitch. She just knows huge amounts of money have been moving through his accounts and now he's been fired over it. She draws the only conclusion that makes sense to her. He's mixed up in something illegal. After years together, she ends it in a single text message. She doesn't want to know what he's into and she doesn't want any part of it. >> [music] >> In one morning, Dan Saunders loses his job and the woman he was going to marry.

He has one thing left, a broken ATM in a town he no longer has any reason to stay in. With nothing left in Wangaratta, Dan finally told his best mate Mark the truth about the glitch. Mark didn't want any part of it himself, but he'd happily come along for a few drinks. So, the two of them jumped on a train to Melbourne. They checked into the Crown Towers, $600 a night. And standing in that room, looking out at the city lights, something shifted in Dan's head.

Up to now, he treated the glitch like a problem, money he'd owe, a mistake the bank would fix any day. But now [music] he thought, if he was probably going to jail for this anyway, why not actually live it? In his own words, four words, why couldn't it be? That was the moment Dan stopped being a broke bartender who'd found some money and decided to spend it like no one ever had. There was just one problem to solve first.

So far, the glitch only worked at that one ATM back in Wangaratta. But after a few days of experimenting, Dan cracked it. A slightly different way of shuffling the money that freed it from that single machine. Now it worked at any National Australia Bank ATM in the country. He hadn't just found a broken machine anymore. He'd found a broken [music] bank. And there was one more thing he needed. He still half believed it wasn't real.

So, he called in an old friend from his casino days. We don't actually know for certain who this friend was. The people around Dan have kept their names out of the story to protect their families and careers. But we know what happened. Dan took him to an ATM at midnight and showed him live $50,000 appearing out of nothing. Then another 50,000. For the first time, someone other than Dan was watching money appear from nowhere.

And this friend asked the question that changed everything. >> Why are you still gambling? Sitting at betting terminals trying to win money back when you can just make it appear any night in any amount you want. >> Dan had never thought of it that way. His whole life, his instinct had been to gamble. But the friend was right. He didn't need to win anything. He already had all of it. And from that night on, Dan Saunders stopped trying to get rich and started spending like a man who already was.

What he did over the next few months is some of the most insane spending you'll ever hear. >> [laughter] >> And here I'm going to ask you to subscribe to the channel and hit the like button. It really helps us keep making stories like this one. From that point on, Dan Saunders lived like a man with no limit >> [music] >> because he didn't have one. He and his friends made a rule. Every day had to be bigger than the last.

They wore tailored suits every single day. They hired bodyguards. They got spray tans and went to day spas because as one of them put it, rich people take care of how they look. They traveled everywhere by limousine and they carried their cash in Louis Vuitton duffel bags. Not for the style, but because they needed something big enough to hold it all. Getting the cash was easy. The ATM still capped out at a thousand a day, but a bank branch had no such limit.

So, Dan would walk into a National Australia Bank branch, stand in the lunchtime queue, and calmly ask the teller for a hundred thousand dollars. And they'd count it out because on their screen, he had millions. And the spending got genuinely absurd. He'd hand taxi drivers three hundred dollars and tell them to go home and rest for the night. He once paid for the drinks of more than two hundred and fifty people in a single club.

He'd rent an entire mansion for the weekend, then drive around in a minivan picking up random tourists and backpackers to fill it and throw a party with a hired DJ. One night, he paid for a woman's wedding dress and the two of them dressed up and walked around Melbourne pretending to be newlyweds just to score free drinks. The group's transport kept escalating, too. Taxis led to knowing limo drivers. Limo drivers led to helicopter pilots.

And helicopter pilots eventually led to a private jet, which Dan chartered for eighty thousand dollars to fly himself and eleven friends to a private island near Bali for the weekend. Champagne, caviar, the whole island to themselves. Now, you might be wondering if Dan had to hit an ATM every single night to keep his account from collapsing, how could he leave the city for a weekend on an island? Here's the answer, and it's the same reason the glitch worked at all.

The bank's system went into its offline mode not just overnight, but all through the weekend. Basically, anytime the bank was effectively closed. From Friday to Sunday, the reversals paused. So, the weekends were his to disappear on. But, the single most audacious thing Dan ever did with this money wasn't the jet, or the island, or the mansion. It was a party. Dan and his friends noticed that one of their favorite bars in Melbourne, the Watermark down on the Docklands, happened to sit right around the corner from the head office of the National Australia Bank.

The exact bank he was robbing every single night. So, as a joke, they designed a flyer for an NAB staff [music] party. Free drinks at the Watermark, and stuck it up inside the NAB building itself, [music] at the bottom of the escalator, where every employee would see it walking in. When the night came, between 4 and 600 National Australia Bank employees showed up. Dan paid for all of it. Then, one of his friends climbed onto a table, raised a glass, and toasted the crowd. >> We just like to thank the NAB.

They've been really good to us this year. >> [screaming] >> The room erupted in cheers. Hundreds of the bank's own staff drinking all night on money stolen from the bank, toasting the bank for it. And here's the part that's almost hard to believe. None of this was hidden. It happened on the bank's own doorstep, in front of hundreds of its own employees. If a single person inside NAB had stopped and asked the obvious question, "Who is this guy, and where is all his money coming from?" The whole thing could have come apart that night.

But nobody did. To everyone who saw it, it just looked like some generous rich guy throwing a party. The one question that would have exposed Dan was the one question nobody ever thought to ask. And that was true everywhere, not just at the party. Because every time Dan spent big, the bank's fraud system flagged it, and someone would call him. Not to stop him, to thank him. >> Hello. >> Mr. Saunders, we're just confirming, did you spend $30,000 today? >> Yeah, that was me. >> Thank you for confirming.

We're just looking after your security. Thanks for banking with us. >> Thanks. >> Over the whole glitch, the bank called Dan somewhere between 70 and 100 times. Every time reaching out to make sure the man quietly robbing them was happy with his purchases. Not once did anyone notice the money didn't exist. The biggest bank in the country was calling the man robbing it to check he was comfortable. But here's the part nobody around him could see.

Every night the system was live, no matter what city he was in, no matter what party was happening, Dan had to slip away. Alone, and walk to an ATM. Because if he [music] missed even one, the account would fall behind, the bank would freeze it, and everything would collapse. He was living like a billionaire by day, and every night at midnight, he was doing unpaid shift work to keep the lie alive. And that, [music] the part no one saw, was slowly starting to destroy him.

Here's what nobody at the parties could see. Dan Saunders was falling apart. He had money coming out of every wall in the country. Three hotel suites booked in three different cities at once, flying between them. And in the middle of all of it, surrounded by people having the time of their lives, he was the only one in the room who wasn't happy because the money had stopped meaning anything. Think about what happens to a gambler when money becomes unlimited.

Gambling only works because it's a risk. You bet something you might lose, and that's the whole thrill. But when you can make unlimited money appear every night, the risk is gone. Dan said that after the ATM, sitting at a roulette table felt pointless. Why chase a few thousand when you can walk outside and make 50? The one thing he'd built his entire life around, the thrill of the gamble, was gone. He'd broken it by winning too hard.

So he started chasing the feeling somewhere else, in other people. He'd find a busker on the street [music] that nobody was watching and quietly pay passersby $50 each to stop and listen until there was a real crowd. He met a couple at dinner who said they'd always dreamed of Hawaii but couldn't afford it. So he pulled $20,000 out of a bag and told them to go. He met a woman working double shifts to save [music] for a course in Paris, and he simply paid for the whole thing.

And he'll tell you himself, >> [music] >> he wasn't doing it to be a good person. He was doing it because the look on a stranger's face when you hand them the impossible was the only thing left that made him feel anything at all. But even that [music] started to fade because the fear was getting worse. Every day, Dan was certain this was the day it would end. He became paranoid, constantly looking over his shoulder. He developed severe [music] anxiety and panic attacks, sometimes so bad he could barely stand.

His heart would race, and he developed [music] a violent twitch in his right eye from the blood vessels spasming. One afternoon, he fell asleep in his hotel room and dreamed a SWAT team was smashing through the door to arrest him. He woke to a real knock, and for 1 second, he was sure the nightmare had come true. The police, the SWAT team, here to take him. He opened the door, heart pounding. It was housekeeping, just bringing fresh towels, and he needed them because he'd woken up drenched in sweat.

That was Dan Saunders now. Unlimited money, three penthouse suites, and a man so hollowed out that a knock from the cleaning lady nearly stopped his heart. He couldn't keep doing it. And one night, alone in a hotel room, he made a decision almost nobody with unlimited money has ever made. He decided to give himself up. The way Dan Saunders turns off an infinite money machine is almost funny in how simple it is. He calls his friends in one last time, tells them it's over, and lets them transfer themselves whatever they want before it's gone.

Some beg him not to stop, but his mind is made up. And then he does the one thing that ends the whole glitch. Nothing. He just stops going to the ATM. Without him topping it up, the system catches up within a day. Every transfer he never covered reverses at once, and his account crashes to $1.6 million in the red. That's the number he now owes the bank. All he has left to show for 4 and 1/2 months of unlimited wealth is $80,000 in cash, which he pours out into a hotel bathtub and stares at.

Then Dan does something a criminal almost never does. He walks into a National Australia Bank branch, picks up their phone, and calls the bank to confess. >> There have been some strange transactions on my account. You should look into it. >> You're not getting any more money, Mr. Saunders. And I think you know why. >> What's actually going on here? >> You're going to jail. >> [music] >> It's a police matter now. You've ruined your life. >> And with that, Dan Saunders has confessed out loud to the bank he took 1 and 1/2 million dollars from.

He goes home and waits for the arrest. Here's the twist nobody expects. Dan confessed and nobody came. No police, no knock on the door, not for years. There had never even been an investigation. The bank knew what he'd done and chose to do nothing. Partly to avoid the headline and partly because they had their own secrets. A royal commission would later find NAB had charged fees to thousands of dead customers, taking money from accounts of people who no longer existed.

Executives jailed for that? Zero. But getting away with it didn't free Dan. It broke him. Going from $3 to millions to nightly terror wrecked his mind. Paranoia, guilt, certain the police would show up one day and take it all. The strangest part of this whole story, the one person who most wanted Dan Saunders arrested was Dan Saunders. So in 2014, he went on national TV and confessed to millions just to force someone to deal with him.

Days later, he was arrested on camera. He got 12 months. A bartender took a million and a half, begged to be caught, and went to prison. The bank stole from the dead and paid a fine. One is a criminal, the other is a bank.