What would you do with thousands that didn’t belong to you?

Just imagine you went to withdraw money from the cash machine and discovered you were £52,000 richer than you thought you were and the money had been deposited into your account by your local council.

It could happen to any of us. What would you do?

No, it’s not the premise for a new game called The Moral Maze it actually happened to 23-year-old Michaela Hutchings, from Lichfield, who appeared in Stafford Crown Court last week charged with retaining a wrongly credited bank transfer.

Once Michaela realised the bungling council had made a huge mistake, rather than contact them to sort it out, she went on a marathon shopping spree.

It must have seemed like all her birthdays and Christmases had come at once. She spent £9,000 on designer clothes, sunglasses, jeans, shoes and handbags.

I think we’ve all had fantasies of being let loose in a shopping centre, picking and choosing exactly what we want without having to glance at the price tag or wait for the sales. Bliss.

Then Michaela got her sensible head on. But no, she still didn’t tell the council about their error instead she contacted her bank and transferred £40,000 into an investment account. She also gave her mum Elaine £1,000 in cash. Nice thought, Michaela, to remember mum.

Just imagine the heady excitement of that unexpected windfall!

And the question we all have to ask ourselves is what would we do? How honest are we? And where do the edges blur when it comes to dishonesty?

It’s a no-brainer that robbing someone is wrong. But when it comes to a big organisation a local authority, a bank, the government is that different? Is it excusable? What happens when they lose our money, when they go bust and pension pots disappear or our savings are worthless?

These nameless, faceless people seem to feel no shame. In fact many of them are still happy to collect their bonuses. So was Michaela really so wrong in splashing the council’s cash?

In court, her defence lawyer Philip Bradley said his client admitted to a “fleeting moment of pleasure” in spending the money.

I’ll bet. A big, no-holds-barred shopping spree is most women’s guilty pleasure and Michaela made the most of it.

But in the twisty, windy paths of the moral maze, there is no getting away from one basic fact she committed a crime.

Whether you’re a big corporation employing clever lawyers to find ways to dodge paying your taxes or a 23-year-old woman filling a shopping trolley if the money isn’t yours, you have no right to spend it.

Michaela has learned a painful lesson. Crime really doesn’t pay.

As she had no previous convictions, she was given a 12-month community order and told to carry out 150 hours of unpaid work.

It’s human to be tempted but honesty really is the best policy.