An international manhunt is underway for a New Zealand couple who have allegedly fled the country after a banking blunder accidently landed nearly $8 million in their account.

The couple, who ran Rotorua's BP Barnetts service station on Old Taupo Road, are Leo Gao and Australian girlfriend Cara Young.

The runaway millionaires are understood to have received the $7.8million windfall after applying for a $NZ10,000 business overdraft, according to local reports.

Speculation is rife among residents in the North Island town of Rotorua, that a recently closed local BP service station is at the centre of the Westpac slip up.

The money's disappearance is believed to be connected to a Rotorua BP service station, part-owned by one of the missing couple, which went into receivership on May 8.

The unnamed couple, believed to be Korean Leo Gao and his Kiwi girlfriend Kara Young have not been seen since.

The service station traded as Barnett's BP and was registered in the Companies Register under Heights Services Ltd. The company directors are named as Hui Gao and Huan Di Zhang.

Leo Gao lived in a house close to the service station, with other family members. The unoccupied, furnished house has been for sale for $220,000 since October.

Helaine Aim, owner of neighbouring business St Andrews Bakery, said she was friends with the couple, who she referred to as Leo and Kara, and saw them daily.

She said she last saw them two weeks ago.

"I would go and have coffee with them at their house. They told me they were planning a holiday. I did not see them for a couple of days. I thought it was a little strange but didn't think much about it because I thought they were busy preparing for the holiday."

A spokesman for Westpac told ninemsn the bank was working closely with local police to recover the money.

One News sources tonight suggested the couple may have headed towards Korea or China with up to $6m.

Westpac has reportedly recovered $4m.

A source told the Rotorua Review newspaper a police liaison officer was sent to China recently to search for the couple.

Detective Senior Sergeant David Harvey has called on Interpol to help track the couple down.

A Westpac spokesman today refused to confirm the amount mistakenly given to the couple, though said the bank was "pursuing vigorous criminal and civil action to recover the sum of money stolen".

He said human error was responsible for the couple's substantial windfall, not a systems error, and that the bank was reviewing its procedures.

Detective Senior Sergeant Harvey was prepared only to say that an investigation had been launched into a substantial sum of money that had been "mistakenly advanced" from Westpac.

If $10 million turned up in your account, could you keep it?

Banking Ombudsman Liz Brown says it is generally a criminal offense to spend money accidentally put into your bank account if you know the money is not yours. In her 15 years as banking ombudsman she had been involved in 10 to 20 "payment by mistake" cases, though none involved millions.

Massey University banking lecturer Claire Matthews said the recipients would probably not get away with it. "They've taken funds that they're not entitled to, that are not theirs. They've effectively, I guess, become thieves."

SUDDENLY RICHER

Auckland businesswoman Karen Batchelor knows what it feels like to be rich for a day after $80,000 was credited to her National Bank account in error 10 years ago. It turned out a client had made two transfers that day, and the client's bank had accidentally reversed them.

The client was horrified. "She said to me, 'Gosh, you could have done a runner with that,' but actually $80,000 would not be enough to tempt me. I knew bloody well I didn't have that much money."

Daniel Aitcheson, an aftersales and finance adviser at Mayfield Motors in Blenheim said he had $28,000 mistakenly deposited into his National Bank account several years ago.

He said he contacted the bank and let them know about the mystery deposit but was told it would cost him $50 for them to investigate, and that they would refund the money if it was found to be teh bank's error.

After a week-long investigation, Mr Aitcheson said he was bemused when the bank reported that the money was indeed his and it had been an over-the-counter cash deposit.

"I knew it wasn't for me but I was quite surprised when they said the twenty-eight grand was a cash deposit over the counter."

Mr Aitcheson said he decided that if the money was still there in four weeks he would claim it and admits to being a little disappointed when it was withdrawn after three weeks.

"I was sort of counting down," he said. "Obviously someone was freaking out about it."

He said the bank was "pretty apologetic" when they had discovered it was there own blunder and had refunded his $50.

He was even more disappointed when he was told by a friend who worked at ANZ bank at the time that if a bank found that no mistake had been made, that he was entitled to keep the money.

Beneficiary Simon Mainey said he checked his account balance early last month to discover a $580 credit from an unknown person's Visa card. He said he briefly toyed with the idea of keeping the money but decided against it.

"I rang the bank to get them to stop me spending what wasn't mine, to remove any temptation to spend it…Instead they offered to do an investigation to discover where it came from and if the bank was not at fault, this would cost me $25," he said.

Mr Mainey said he declined the offer, as he felt that it would have been the depositor's error and said he would wait for them to realise their mistake. He said he was told the bank would inform him before removing the money.

However, he was annoyed to find that the money had been taken from his account several days later, without his permission.

He said he was not angry that the money had gone back to its rightful owner but at the fact that the bank went into his account without his permission: "In this regard, I was let down," he said.

The voluntary banking code states that a bank can reverse payments made into individual accounts when a bank had made an error.

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