I realise it's a very strange question.

In a moment of supreme stupidity, I managed to transfer back my mortgage money to my UK account twice yesterday which has left me with a few thousand francs in the wrong currency & the wrong country - well, somewhere in banking cyberspace now; it's left here but not arrived there yet. The fault was entirely mine so now I just need to transfer back one chunk of money. Either that or spend nothing at all on my UBS account till next payday.

However, apart from the potential spending on transfer fees or losses on changing exchange rates, I wondered if an instant turnaround of money from my Swiss UBS account to my UK RBS one then right back again would raise red flags to those looking out for dodgy dealings. It's a small sum of money in those terms but a decent amount to me and I don't want to end up with it ring-fenced while I convince the authorities I'm unbelievably stupid but generally harmless.

UBS won't care, but the receiving bank in the UK might freeze your account until you prove where the funds came from. This has happened twice now to us, but in the Channel Islands. Luckily they still let our direct debits through.

If it's under $10,000 you'll be fine

€10'000 or £10'000?

Though when I paid £27'000 in cash into a UK bank account, all they asked me is where the money came from. "Repayment of loan to in-laws". IIRC when you do the transfer, you do state the purpose.

Have you contacted UBS? They may be able to prevent the transfer if you move quickly enough. They did for me once.

I doubt my paltry amount is 10,000 in any currency on the planet!

Sadly, I spoke to UBS immediately I realised my error but they couldn't stop either transfer. I guess it had been processed & deducted from my account but not yet sent, hence the 3 day delay in it arriving.

It's now shown up in my UK account but I can only do an international transfer 'in branch' with RBS. So I emailed my mum to go in with my power of attorney and do the transfer on my behalf. My family now know I'm a muppet. Great!

Well - they were bound to find out sooner or later. Miss Piggy.

What about Vietnam? 10,000 Vietnam Dong is less than £0.40 (CHF0.65)

What a smartarse!

Esspecially as I compounded the muppetry by only telling her half my UBS a/c number for the transfer! I just hope I've noticed in time for the transfer to be amended.

Since Dubya subpoenaed SWIFT in the US for their records, AIUI, every transfer over £5000 GBP goes to the CIA for scrutiny.

Now for the happy ending. Once I spotted the whole account number snafu, my mum went into the bank today to do the transfer.

I checked online that it had debited my RBS account today then looked in UBS just for something to do and it's showing on there already! It says a 'booking date' of the 28th, Tuesday, so I guess it's not yet cleared funds. Doesn't matter.

Oh, and no men in suits showed up at my door (yet!). Thanks for all the information about limits, etc. I was a very nervous monkey for a while there.