When a customer of a British bank withdrew more than what was in the account, employees doggedly hounded the scofflaw. Problem was, the customer was a dog named “Noodles,” and he’s no longer at the address on file at NatWest Bank in Leicestershire, Great Britain. A dog with a bank account sounds bizarre, but Grant McDonald, a spokesman for NatWest, said his bank gets many cases of people taking out accounts in the names of their pets, “to pay for things such as vets’ or kennel fees,” according to the Metro newspaper. Apparently, Noodles and his owners moved out of the abode listed on the account months ago, leaving a $10.88 overdraft fee for new tenant Rupert Chapman and Charley, his 6-year-old Labradoodle, to clean up the mess, DigitalSpy.com The official letter left Chapman scratching his head and Charley everywhere else, according to ThisIsLeicestershire.com. “We moved in in August and the previous people had rented and I didn’t know who they were, so I thought it would be fitting to send a reply from Charley,” Chapman told the paper, especially after he discovered the person asking for the overdraft fee from a dog was named “Collier.”
The letter that Chapman sent in Charley’s words included this piece of doggerel: “I have searched every nook and cranny in the house in an attempt to find sufficient funds to repay you. I have found four drachma and 24 pesetas behind the toilet pedestal and under the stairs. I was wondering whether this would meet your needs?”
Once bank officials got the letter, they realized they had pulled a real boner.
McDonald said that neither Chapman, nor Charley owe any money to the bank.
“This is the previous tenant’s debt, so they shouldn’t worry about it,” he said, according to the Metro.
It’s unlikely something similar could happen in the U.S., where the law requires that every person who opens a bank account show a valid form of ID, such as a driver’s license or birth certificate, according to John Oxford, the Director of External Affairs at Renasant Bank in Tupelo, Miss.
“Some people set up trusts for their animals, but any correspondance would go to the person who set up the account, not the animal,” Oxford told The Huffington Post. “I guess in theory you could have a paw print as a signature card but dogs do not have identification by state agencies per se.”