The result of this potentially expensive incident is that Westpac Bank has been left with a deficit of NZ$6 million and the unnamed owners of the gas station business are now on the run - apparently with around 60% of the cash.

Reports from New Zealand suggest that the police there have called in Interpol to help trace the couple, who are believed to have left the country along with their young daughter.

Interestingly, the bank says it pursuing criminal and civil actions to recover the money, which was credited to the couple's business bank account on May 5, with the couple's gas station reportedly closing the next day without warning.

The bank is not saying how the money was accidentally credited to the couple's account, or what caused the error.

Unconfirmed reports, however, suggest that a lack of programme code auditing at the software development stage - meaning that there were insufficient safeguards to prevent a keying error being picked up - resulted in the transaction going through.

Coupled with simple human error at the bank concerned, the nett result was a bank error that somewhat eclipses the `bank error in your favour - collect £200' notice seen on Monopoly Community Chest cards around the world.