MISSOURI CITY, Texas – Lori Judd was shocked when she logged onto her late husband’s Chase Bank account and found that the balance seemed to be overdrawn by over $99 billion.
"My eyes, my jaw, the whole thing just dropped right to the floor,” said Judd.
The account read -$99,999,998,005.31 and Judd couldn’t figure out why.
Judd said the account belonged to her late husband, Brian Judd.
Brian Judd died about three weeks ago and Lori Judd was in the process of closing up his accounts when she noticed the problem.
"You hope that when you go, that the both of you will go together or something like that,” said Judd. “Then he’s gone that’s an emotional impact of huge proportions and then to have something like (this) happen, (I) did not need that.”
Judd says she tried calling and emailing Chase Bank but claims that she got no response.
KPRC 2 contacted Chase Bank and was told the account wasn’t actually overdrawn but that there was a hold on the account.
A spokesperson for the bank said it was standard practice.
“Brian Judd was the only person on the account. After his passing, we put the debit on the account to protect against unauthorized withdrawals,” said Greg Hassell, a Chase Bank spokesperson. "We are reaching out to Ms. Judd to explain the process for accessing money left in the account.”
Judd doesn’t agree with the practice but says she hopes by speaking out others will be spared the stress and heartache.
“If somebody else can learn from this and it can somehow be prevented from happening to somebody else that’ll be a big plus,” Judd said.