Money: it’s like if bitcoin wasn’t a scam.\h Invented around 3,000 BCE and adapted for the big\h\h
screen in 2016, money has long been the number one\h answer to the question, “how do you buy stuff?”\h\h
Now, for most people, money is not free: if you\h want to get, say, one dollar, you’ll typically\h\h
have to pay about a dollar for it. But money can\h be free if you belong to a few select groups: bar\h\h
mitzvah boys, armed robbers, people with the last\h name Walton, and people who are the Australian\h\h
bartender Dan Saunders—a man who also, by the\h way, has no licensable pictures on the internet,\h\h
so for this video, we’ll be using the next best\h thing: these pictures of an American Pianist also\h\h
named Dan Saunders that I found on Getty Images. One night in 2011, Dan was out drinking with his\h\h
mates in his hometown of Wangaratta, when he\h decided to pull some money out of an ATM to buy\h\h
some grog. Now in order for this story to make\h sense, it’s key to understand that Dan had two\h\h
cards, and two accounts, with National Australia\h Bank. One was a savings account, linked to a Visa\h\h
debit card, that had $3 sitting in it. And one\h was a credit account, linked to a Mastercard\h\h
credit card, with a $1,000 credit limit. Being the semi-responsible joey he was,\h\h
Dan tried to find out the balance on his savings\h account with his debit card, but the machine told\h\h
him his balance was unavailable. Then, he decided\h to transfer $200 from his credit account to his\h\h
savings account. He put in his credit card,\h punched in the transaction, but once he did,\h\h
the machine flashed “transaction canceled’ and\h spat out his card. But fueled with the courage\h\h
of Vitamin B, Dan decided to try pulling out\h the $200 from his savings account anyways,\h\h
using his debit card. And it worked. Given\h that Dan only had $3 or so bucks in his savings\h\h
account before, he figured the transaction must\h have gone through. So he tried again with $500.\h\h
Then $600. And it kept working, well past his\h $1,000 credit limit. The next morning, he woke\h\h
up with $2,000 in his wallet, and assumed his\h credit card was $2,000 in debt. But when he went\h\h
to check his account, it listed no record of the\h transaction. Dan had turned water into wine—and\h\h
by water I mean nothing and by wine I mean money. Dan didn’t know it at the time, but the reason\h\h
this was working is because he’d done\h the transfers between 1 and 3 am,\h\h
which is when ATMs for National Australia Bank\h go offline. So when he tried to transfer money\h\h
from his credit card to his savings account,\h the machine wasn’t able to check whether his\h\h
credit card was actually able to send that much\h money. It just blindly honored the transaction,\h\h
crediting the money to his savings account. But,\h the tricky part, which Dan would soon discover,\h\h
is that the ATM would eventually realize that\h it had mistakenly trusted the transaction,\h\h
and it would undo it. But—and this\h is key—that process took a full day.\h
So Dan developed a system: every night, he\h would double down on his transfers and stay\h\h
one day ahead of the bank. So, for example,\h on a Tuesday between 1-3am, Dan could add, say\h\h
$10,000 to his savings account. During the day\h on Tuesday, he could spend that $10,000 buying\h\h
this 1996 kangaroo beanie baby that is actually\h listed on ebay for $10,000. But then by Wednesday,\h\h
his savings account would have figured out\h the error, undone the $10,000 transfer,\h\h
and the $10,000 he spent buying the beanie baby\h would still be subtracted from his account,\h\h
so his savings account would be negative $10,000.\h So, to stay ahead of it, on Wednesday between\h\h
1-3 am, Dan could transfer $20,000 to his\h account. That way, during the day Wednesday,\h\h
when the $10,000 transaction from Tuesday\h morning is undone and taken from his account,\h\h
it won’t matter, because that account now has an\h additional $20,000 in it, which won’t disappear\h\h
until Thursday. And then Dan just repeated and\h repeated and repeated every day, increasing the\h\h
amounts every time he spent money to stay ahead\h of the bank, creating a kind of death spiral of\h\h
money—which would also coincidentally be a great\h tagline for our new channel Jet Lag: The Game.\h
But, granted one shot, and one opportunity to\h seize everything he ever wanted, Dan captured\h\h
it. In four and a half months, he spent $1.6\h million of the bank’s money: betting wildly in\h\h
casinos, staying at the $2,000-a-night Emirates\h resort, eating Mayura wagyu and beluga caviar,\h\h
but also acting as a sort of Australian Robin\h Hood—an Ostrich Bonnet if you will. He paid off\h\h
his and his friends’ student loans, sent a woman\h to Paris to learn French, tipped everyone $500,\h\h
and even dropped $90,000 on a private\h jet to take him and his mates to Bali.\h
Now if there’s anything we’ve learned\h from The Big Short, it’s that Brad Pitt\h\h
is a character actor stuck in a leading man’s\h body, and also that banks are dumb. You see,\h\h
National Australia Bank never caught on to\h what Dan was doing—the only calls he got were\h\h
from the bank asking him to confirm that he had\h made his purchases. Ultimately, Dan was caught,\h\h
but only because he started feeling guilty, and\h stopped the daily transfers. The dominos fell,\h\h
the bank called him in, gave him a talking to, and\h Dan waited for the coppas to arrest him. But two\h\h
years passed and nobody came, seemingly because\h publicly acknowledging the mistake would be worse\h\h
for the bank than just eating the loss. So, in\h total madlad form, Dan went on a press tour,\h\h
appearing on news shows explaining what he did,\h and essentially saying, “somebody please come\h\h
arrest me.” Eventually his wish was granted and\h he served one year in prison on fraud charges,\h\h
and was ordered to pay back $200,000. In a reddit AMA, when asked what he’d do\h\h
differently, Dan said, “I don't second guess\h things. I'd just do everything the same.”\h
What would you do with infinite money? Well,\h if you’re my friend, YouTuber Patrick Willems,\h\h
you’d make an entire feature-length movie called\h Night of the Coconut that’s available exclusively\h\h
on Nebula, which is exactly what he did with that\h arguably irresponsible budget Nebula gave him for\h\h
it. The HAI writers, Ben and Adam, and I got to\h go to the premiere of Night of the Coconut and\h\h
we were blown away—it’s not only, like, a real\h movie, it’s a good one, about a multiverse and\h\h
an evil coconut trying to take over the world by\h gaining clout, and it’s extremely funny and it’s\h\h
got a whole musical number in it for some reason…\h look, if you’re one of the 5% of our viewers who\h\h
like our jokes, you’ll love Night of the Coconut.\h The best way to get Nebula—which, of course, is\h\h
the streaming service started by me and my creator\h friends that also has a ton of original content\h\h
I’ve made—is through the Nebula-CuriosityStream\h bundle, where you also get a subscription to\h\h
CuriosityStream, the incredible documentary\h streaming service with, for example, the awesome\h\h
six-part series “Inside the Mind of a Con Artist”\h all for under $15 a year. Just click the button\h\h
on-screen or go to curiositystream.com/HAI, and\h you’ll be helping support HAI while you’re at it.