What would you do if you suddenly received $10 million from your bank on accident? Well, that's exactly the question that a couple from New Zealand once had to ask themselves, because that's exactly the situation that they somehow found themselves in. In the end, they chose to flee the country with their newfound wealth to try to desperately hold on to it and make a new life for themselves on the route to their shock.

However, an international manhunt was soon launched to find them and bring them to justice. And what resulted was a story that would later be made into a movie and believe it or not, if the couple were given a chance to make their choice all over again, they might not have acted differently. Welcome back, guys. My name is Andy Chang and this is Hidden Stories.

In 2009, a 29 year old man named Leo GAO was really frustrated with life from a really young age. He had always dreamed of starting his own business and becoming extremely rich. That had always been his one big goal in life to make a ton of money for himself so that he could live to the fullest and do everything that he had always wanted to do.

Unfortunately, however, every single one of Leo's business ventures so far had completely failed, leaving him basically broke. And the one last business that he owned, a small British Petroleum gas station in the town of Rotorua. New Zealand was really struggling and was on the verge of going under as well. As a result, at the time Leo was extremely unmotivated and depressed, feelings that were only further intensified by his rocky relationship with his girlfriend hurt.

But one day, as Leo was just casually checking his bank account, he suddenly couldn't believe his eyes. A few days before, he had successfully applied for an $100,000 loan with his bank Westpac, to renovate his gas station so that he could sell it. So that was the number he had expected to see. But somehow the actual number in front of him read a mind blowing 10 million NZD or around 7 million USD.

And the moment Leo really processed the sheer life changing weight of this amount of money, he just couldn't help but holler aloud. I'm getting rich. But although Leo and his girlfriend Cora were both ecstatic and were ready, dreaming about all the things that they could buy and do with $10 million, they both knew that it had to have been a mistake and that the money wasn't actually theirs.

The couple figured that Westpac would soon notice the mistake and that the money would all be gone. The very next morning, when the next morning came, though, Leo was shocked to find that all 10 million was still there in his bank account, able to be withdrawn and used whenever he wanted. It was at that very moment that he and Cora really considered for the first time.

What if we actually used this money? In their minds, they could easily justify spending it, since after all the money was in Leo's account and it wasn't exactly illegal to steal from yourself. As a result, Leo's suit had around 6.8 million NZD, or around 5 million USD withdrawn from his account and carefully placed into 23 different bank accounts around the world, including in the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, Mexico and Macao, China.

Since Leo had always been the one to take care of all the finance related issues in his relationship with Cora, he never even told her that he was doing any of this or about his plans to launder all of their money through casinos in the gambling hub of Macao. In Leo's mind, he was protecting Cora, as well as her six year old daughter, Lina, by not telling them.

He knew very well that Westpac would soon come after him for taking their money and running and he didn't want his actions to put his family and any sort of risk as a result. After only enjoying a single fancy meal with Cora the day after the money had accidentally landed in his account, Leo took off on a flight to Macao, China, without telling anyone.

When Cora came home and realized that he was gone, she felt completely abandoned. She had figured that she and Leo would make a decision about what to do with the money together and then leaving without even saying goodbye greatly hurt her. When Leo landed in Macao, he met with his dad, who lived there since his dad had long worked in the casino business.

Leo had wanted to confirm with him whether his plans were a good idea to clean all of the money he'd received by making it seem like they'd come from gambling wins rather than an accidental bank transfer. When his dad approved of this idea and also connected him to a trusted casino that he had worked with for a very long time, Leo finally began to relax a bit and believe that things might actually work out.

His conversation with one of the representatives also went very well, which helped alleviate even more of the worries and anxieties that he had felt about running away with all of this money. So just a couple days after Leo had arrived in Macao, he called Cora and told her where he was. Although Cora was obviously furious with them for leaving her and their daughter Lena without even a single word.

You apologized, admitting that it was completely his fault, but explaining that he just wanted to make sure that everything was safe before having them join him in Macao. Since this made sense, Cora decided to forgive him. Following Leo's instructions, she left a note at their destination, stating that they'd gone out of business and told all of their friends and family that they were going on holiday.

Then she took Lena and boarded one of the next flights in Macao, leaving everything else behind, including even their pet kit. Leo had told her that they would be gone for three weeks at most, just taking a nice vacation to get everything sorted out. But little did the couple know that wasn't at all what would happen, and they would never be able to return home under normal conditions ever again.

Although Cora knew that what Leo was doing in Macao was very dodgy and likely even illegal. She wasn't about to pass up on an opportunity like this since like Leo, she wanted a better life for both herself and her daughter as well. When she first arrived in Macao, it really seemed like this better life was finally becoming a reality.

The resort suite that Leo met her at was extravagant, beyond her wildest dreams. It looked like it cost a fortune. Almost every meal that Cora sat down to eat with her family was suddenly five star dining, consisting of many items so fancy, but she'd never even heard of them. And before long, Leo was regularly playing with tens of thousands and then hundreds of thousands of dollars every single night at the casino.

Money that would have taken them years to make. And they're all. But it was the first time that Cora, Leo, and Lena had ever experienced being truly rich, truly untouchable. They felt like royalty, and nothing seemed to really burst. They would spend their days lounging in luxury, sipping on martinis. Next, a gorgeous resort port without a care in the world.

But almost as soon as this new fantasy life was started, it ended. Leo suddenly began losing big at the casino tables, including once earning over $100,000 USD. In just a single note. To make matters even worse, it was revealed that Leo's dad could connected Leo with the specific casino in the first place. He had never actually had his son's best interests at heart since Leo had confided in him that all of his newfound wealth had technically been stolen from Westpac Bank.

His dad had decided to take advantage of the stunt by manipulating his son into signing predatory casino contracts that took it insane 50% of the money that he had deposited in earned in fees. Although this percentage was way, way higher than the fees that were normally towards Leo's dad knew that his son to do nothing about it since his money had been illegally obtained.

As a result, Leo and Cora soon found themselves unfairly down hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars when they angrily confronted Leo's dad about this, though furious that the man had put his business before even his own son, Leo stayed at the casino. Representative became outraged as well. Leo and Cora didn't know it at the time, but they had picked a horrible fight to take.

In fact, the couple believes to this day that had they not angered Leo's dad in the casino, Westpac Bank may have actually never realized the mistake. Very shortly after this argument took place in anonymous source from Macao tipped off Westpac about a missing $10 million that they might want to look into. When Westpac investigated this lead, they were shocked to discover that one of their employees had indeed accidentally misplaced the decimal and sent a man named Leo go $10 million instead of the correct value of $100,000.

After firing this employee, Westpac immediately began working with local police in New Zealand to raid Leo and Cora's home. From there they realized that the couple had already transferred most of the 10 million into various different bank accounts all across the world and had also fled the country themselves. As such, they soon began working with Interpol and other agencies to launch an international manhunt for them.

Since Leo and Cora had used their own passports to leave New Zealand, the authorities were able to quickly track down their location and Macao. However, this New Zealand didn't have an extradition, an agreement with China. There was absolutely no real way for the authorities to go and arrest Leo and Cora. Despite the fact that they had the couple's exact address.

There wasn't much that they could do, but just wait until the couple traveled out of China to a country where they could be extradited. So Interpol and Westpac begin dedicating all their time and resources to recovering all of the money that had been lost. Instead, before long, they had managed to successfully drain most of the foreign bank accounts that Leo had set up around the world.

When Liu realized what had happened, he began panicking. He, Cora and Lina were on the run at the time and had been for several days already bouncing around from hotel to hotel in China, anxiously trying to avoid what they assumed were countless cops trying to track them down. They knew that they were being hunted and that people wanted justice.

They'd seen their names and faces plastered all over the news and all over the television broadcasts. They'd seen the footage of police officers raiding the homes and of reporters interviewing their friends and families about their whereabouts. Leo and Cora knew that they desperately needed money in order to not only continue avoiding the cops, but also to build a new life for themselves after they were able to get to safety.

So without all of the funds that Leo had carefully hidden, all around the world, they were basically screwed. Out of the 10 million that Leo had originally been given. He now only had just a couple hundred thousand dollars in cold, hard cash that he'd stashed away in a local bank under a fake name. It was a good amount of money, but absolutely nothing compared to the goose egg that Leo and Cora had assumed.

They still had the stress of losing pretty much all the money that Leo had worked so hard to try to keep, to try to clean. To try to turn into his new reality. Ended up just being too much for him. The Bear. Shortly afterwards, Cora woke up one morning and found that he had just left once again without even saying goodbye.

She was now completely alone in China, a foreign country where she barely even spoke the language with her six year old daughter. On the run from Interpol with absolutely no possessions or money to her name, Leo had taken everything with him. Although Cora felt completely hopeless and wanted to kill Leo, she knew that she had no choice but to be strong for her daughter.

She had to find a way to get some money since Leo hit us, or maybe intentionally to be the one to put her name on the player's account that they had opened up the casino in Macao. Cora knew that she was probably the main criminal that the police were after. Even though everything that had happened was almost entirely Leo's fault alone.

But despite just how frustrated and furious Cora was about being looped into her boyfriend's crimes like that, it also gave her a unique opportunity, since she had kept a good amount of the tips that she had received at the casino. She knew that if she returned, the Macao should be able to cast about it. Received a good amount of money.

It would be an extremely risky trip since she had to take a flight to get there. And she was scared that the moment someone recognized her, she would be arrested and handed over to Interpol to be tried for her crimes. However, since Cora desperately needed the money, she felt that she had no other choice. Extreme lucky, though, she was able to make it to and from Macao without any issues with the bit of money that she managed to acquire.

Cora rented an apartment for herself and Lena and began trying to build a new life for the two of them. The next few weeks and months were some of the hardest in her entire life. Cora had to find a new job for herself, which was already difficult enough as it was since she didn't speak much Chinese. But amid all the job application rejections that she was receiving, she soon realized that she had also become pregnant with her second child.

Before long, other complications began coming up in Cora's life as well. Her dad passed away and she was unable to attend his funeral since she was a wanted fugitive who couldn't return home. Her relationships with her sister and mom began to both significantly deteriorate. She was held at knifepoint by a stranger in a road rage incident. She was hospitalized for severe dehydration, and she began feeling extremely lost and lonely and also increasingly anxious about her past crimes catching up to her.

Although Cora did manage to eventually find a new job for herself, doing English voice acting, enrolled Lena in school and made some new friends. She wasn't happy at all when Times got really tough. She genuinely considered just returning back to New Zealand to turn herself in and face the repercussions of her actions once and for all. It was what her family wanted her to do and deep down she knew that it was the right thing to do.

As such, in May of 2010, after Cora had been a wanted fugitive for around a year already, she decided to call Mark Lowther, a senior detective from Rotorua who had been working on her case with Westpac in interviews. Although she kept in contact with Mark over the next few months, she just couldn't bring herself to actually give herself up.

She was terrified of the uncertainty that came with it, whether she would go to prison and what would happen to her daughter. But in February of 2011, after Cora had been on the run for almost two entire years, she finally cracked. She voluntarily flew back into New Zealand and was immediately arrested. Over the next year she would be put on trial and found guilty of 30 different charges related to theft, dishonesty and money laundering.

However, since a judge ruled that Leo had been the main culprit behind the crimes and that Cora had largely been manipulated by him to help him in his illegal acts, she was only sentenced to just nine months of home detention in order to pay back around $10,000. As for Leo, he was arrested by Interpol seven months after Cora turned herself in, when he made the mistake of traveling to Hong Kong, which does have an extradition treaty with New Zealand.

Incredibly, he had actually managed to get a sort of following while he was on the run and had supporters all around the world that viewed his story as a kind of Robin Hood tale. A Facebook page had even been set up called We Support Leo Go and his $10 million run, Leo Run! Despite this, however, Leo eventually pleaded guilty to theft, admitting that he had behaved like A and was sentenced to four years and seven months in prison.

Interestingly, he would only end up serving just 16 months of the sentence before being freed as of the last news coverage on this case in 2012. Out of the around 7 million USD that were accidentally deposited into Leo's bank account, Westpac had only been able to recover around 3 million. It's unknown whether the last 4 million was ever recovered or whether Leo was ever made to repay the money that he had gambled away, lost or just spent.

In 2019, however, a movie called Runaway Millionaires was made about this true story with help and testimony from Cora hurting herself at the end of this movie, Cora states that although her experience was a nightmare and included some of the lowest points in her life, she's not sure whether she would have done things differently. She says that she learned a lot of great lessons about greed, family, friends and love from her journey, and also learned that money is far less important that she had initially imagined.

Take care, guys, and I'll see you all next week.