Over the years we've written plenty of stories about carriers that over-charge their customers with fairly reckless abandon, but accidentally giving customers money doesn't happen too often. But according to Cincinnati's WCPO 9 (hat tip, Consumerist), Sprint accidentally credited one customer's account to the tune of $139,419 via a series of phantom deposits that began to appear shortly after he ported his number over from Verizon.

After signing up for the company's recently launched one-year free promo, the user said his back account began receiving all manner of money from credit cards belonging to other customers:

"I noticed MasterCards, American Express and Visa cards sending credits to my account, with confirmation numbers, but none of those cards were mine."

And the money kept pouring in, from other customers' credit cards.

Jett could not believe what he was seeing: In less that a week, Sprint gave him "$139,000 and some change," he said. "All in credits."
Sprint subsequently fixed the problem after being notified, but has yet to explain how precisely the screw up (the likes of which we've not seen in 18 years of operation) happened.
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