A product manager today told how he was reunited with his lost wallet after an ingenious Good Samaritan tracked him down using a series of tiny online bank transfers.
Tim Cameron, 30, said he lost his wallet – which included his bank cards and driving licence – as he cycled home from his office in Shoreditch on Monday evening.
When he reached his flat in Islington, he realised what had happened and tried unsuccessfully to re-trace his steps to track his belongings down.
Finding nothing, he logged onto his online banking account and noticed four separate transfers had been made into his account.
Each were for the value of a penny, and each contained a message within the constraints of the 18 character limit.
When combined, the message read: “Hi, I found your / wallet in the road / 07XXXXXXXXX / Text or call!”
Within minutes, Mr Cameron was reunited with his wallet after getting in touch with the Good Samaritan who had found it.
His tweet about the ingenious ploy has now gone viral, gaining more than 8,000 retweets and 50,000 ‘likes’ in just a few hours.
Mr Cameron posted: “I just lost my wallet on the way home from work. I didn’t have much identifying info in there so a good Samaritan got in touch with my via my... bank account.
“4x transfers of £0.01 each with a reference up to 18 chars”.
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Speaking to the standard, Mr Cameron explained: “I noticed the references so I gave the guy a call and it turns out he lived only 20 minutes from me.
“I cycled round, got my wallet back and gave him a bottle of red wine. It had all my bank cards and ID cards in it so it would have been an absolute disaster.
“He was a nice bloke. He was going to hand it in to the police and he had tried to find me on Facebook. I was going to go to the police after I had retraced my steps but this happened first.
“It all happened within 90 minutes of getting home, it was crazy how quick it was. It was very clever.”
Software engineer Simon Byford, 30, said he picked up the wallet after finding it in the street near his home, also in Islington.
He told the Standard: “It was right in the middle of the road and a few cars had run over it. I stopped to pick it up then I tried to find him on Facebook but Tim Cameron is such a common name I didn’t have any luck, so I cycled home.
“I had a little think about what information I had and I had his bank cards. It’s an odd way of getting in touch but it was like trying to work out a puzzle, which I liked. I had a little bit of information about him but not enough.”
Mr Byford then realised he could send a short message to the wallet’s owner by making a series of transactions to his account.
“The bank transfer references have a character limit so I had to send him four transfers to get it all in,” Mr Byford said.
“He brought round a bottle of wine which was so sweet of him. It’s so lovely. The reaction to it has just made my evening.”
Mr Cameron added: “I’m very grateful to him and he was very grateful for a bottle of wine. I haven’t paid him back his 4p but perhaps I should.”
After the tweet went viral online, Twitter users praised the ploy as “genius”, while others shared stories of how they had been reunited with lost belongings.