Tech Glitch of the Day

This crazy tech glitch is awesome....except for that whole "got arrested" thing at the end.

“The system should have been the person who owns the card pays money in advance, then spends money on the card,” the prosecutor said. “In this case, it was the reverse. When they bought something, they were credited rather than debited so the amount on the card was increasing and that went on for nine months.”

Click to expand...

im curious on the exact details on how this happend. how can one card be glitched etc.

I'm unclear on the technical details of how this occurred.
Was it human error? Did the shopkeeper just not understand how to process a pre-pay debit card?
I consider human error most likely.

But they say glitchy card in the article, so:
Was the card itself doing this? This was in the UK, so it should be a microchip'd card...
Was it something about this specific shop's card reader?
A combination of the two?
Was it the pre-paid card payment processing back end?

Was the 'glitch' entirely accidental?
Was the card modified? This is a UK article, so I'm guessing it's a microchip card.
Was it some programmer's personal easter egg? If they hadn't kept going back to the same shop they might not have been caught at all.

I read something a couple of years ago where a guy was charged $23 Quadrillion for buying a pack of cigarettes.


http://www.nydailynews.com/news/man-charged-23-148-855-308-184-500-pack-cigarettes-article-1.406131