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I Accidentally Wired $1000 To A Stranger—And It Looks Like He Won’t Be Returning the Money

Here’s How I’m Planning to Pay My Parents Back.

6 min readMay 12, 2023

Long story short, I got mixed-up bank information, wrote down the wrong account number, and had money from our family fund sent to the wrong guy (though, in a spiritual sense, was he the wrong guy?)

Anyway, by the time Mom and I rushed to the bank to see if there was anything we could do about our mistake, he had already withdrawn most of the money.

When Mom called him and he found out why she was calling, he immediately hung up the phone.

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I tried not to wallow in self-pity for too long, but I kept remembering the bad feeling I had while I waited in line at the bank—the urge to just pull out the transfer form and check if there was something wrong.

I even called Mom to make sure I was transferring the right amount of money, but I kept telling myself I was just being paranoid.

I feel worse because my parents are being so nice about it. It’s a 6-digit figure in the local currency I transferred it into, and I can’t even bring myself to say the number out loud.

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winta assefa
winta assefa

Written by winta assefa

Architect, visual artist | My Substack about my life in Ethiopia: wintaassefa.substack.com

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