[avianlyric]

There’s a difference between the institution that receives the money, and the person that owns the account.

If the person owing the account move illegitimate find out of their account, then there’s nothing the receiving institution can do, they can’t return money no longer on their books. They could return money, and push the account owner into an overdraft, but now they’ve taken on the liability of recovering those funds. No bank is gonna do that voluntarily, especially to cover another banks fuck up.

Now the original sending bank could then ask the receiving bank who took the funds, and the receiving bank will tell the sending bank to come back with a court order, because they have a legal obligation to act in the best interest of their customer, even if they think their customer maybe doing something dodgy. Once the sending bank has rustled up a court order, then the receiving bank will hand over the account owners PII, and the sending bank can attempt to recover the money via the courts.

But a no point is the receiving institution ever going put their neck out to help a sending bank recover incorrectly sent funds. It’s the sending banks problem to use the legal system to both discover who received the funds, and pursue recovery directly from them. They can’t recover the funds from the receiving bank directly if the monies moved on and the account owner refuses to cooperate with the recovery process.

People forget there tends to be a very large gap between the law and its enforcement. Frequently it’s too much effort to actually enforce the law, so large sums just get written off instead.