Swiss bank takes ‘deposit and forget’ to extreme

updated 8:58 p.m. ET Aug. 9, 2006

ZURICH, Switzerland - An 85-year-old woman was found in the vault of a Swiss bank when she set off motion detectors hours after the bank was already closed, according to a statement released Wednesday.

Employees at the Zürcher Kantonalbank apparently forgot about the woman.

The director of the bank's safe allowed the woman into the vault on Monday before closing it punctually at 4:30 p.m. local time — with the woman still deep in study of her documents, ZKB said.

She remained so still that she initially failed to activate either the motion detector or the attached camera, the bank said in confirming a report that appeared in the Zurich-based daily Tages-Anzeiger.

She was freed from the room four hours after the vault was closed.

The bank gave the woman a bouquet of flowers for suffering from the ordeal and said it would decide on further nonfinancial compensation.

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