Re: It's a bank, of course it's not free money
You *should* end up ok if the machine doesn't dispense the cash. At some point (daily? weekly) the bank will balance the machine. They start that interval with $x in the ATM, their records say it dispensed $y, if the money remaining in the machine doesn't equal $x-$y, they have a discrepancy to resolve.
Worked out for me once. The old ATMs in my area used to shoot the bills out of a slot an into a shallow pocket in the machine. One Friday afternoon, I stopped at the ATM to withdraw $60 (enough for a poor college student to have an ok weekend). The machine spit out two $20 bills, then paused (perhaps changing which cartridge it was using).
Not realizing there was more cash to come, I reached in to grab the bills. Right as I did so, the last $20 flew out, hit my thumb, and bounced directly back into the ATM. The door over the cash slot snapped shut and the receipt printed out.
Transaction said complete, my receipt said $60, I figured I was screwed out of the cash.
Monday afternoon, I walked into the bank and explained what happened to a teller. The teller referred me to a banker. When I told him the story he chuckled, stood up and yelled over his cubicle wall "hey Fred, I found out where that $20 came from".
Truns out that ATM had a "bucket" to catch bills when things go wrong. That morning, their machine was out of balance by $20, and there was $20 in the bucket.
Said $20, sealed in an envelope, was shortly handed off to me.
(Wells Fargo, before they turned greedy).