Lloyds Bank customers flock to cashpoint dispensing free money

The ATM soon attracted a queue of 60

The cashpoint was eventually shut down after staff were notified of the fault

Going to a cashpoint is an often dismal experience marked by trying to dodge both rain and reminders of your finances, but not for visitors to a Lloyds Bank ATM in Nottinghamshire, who found it dishing out money at will.

The hole-in-the-wall at the bank’s Mansfield Woodhouse branch developed the fault on Monday morning, attracting a flock of customers as it spewed out incorrect sums of cash.

Soon a queue of up to 60 people formed in front of the machine, according to eye witnesses, before the problem was reported by an honourable customer and staff shut it down at 3.20pm in the afternoon.

"There was an error on the machine but at this moment we can’t say what it was," a spokesperson for the bank said. "It looks like it was loaded incorrectly, but as soon as we were aware we closed it off."

Details of how much money was taken or whether the bank would be demanding it back were not given, though it did say it would be investigating the incident.

In the midst of having stacks of cash shuffled into their hands the opportunists clearly forgot that taking money from a cashpoint paying out in error is actually a crime.

An Essex couple were given suspended jail sentences back in 2009 after taking £61,000 from a faulty ATM across a period of three months.