Years later he would get his 15 minutes of fame. In 1989, he told his bank he found $1.2 million in his account that he didn't remember depositing. Bank officials in Toronto insisted there was no mistake and the money belonged to him, while staff at the iocal branch scrambled to reconcile more than a million missing dollars. Bordynuik stuck with his story, which soon made headlines across Canada. Papers proclaiming "Honest John Beturns $1.2 million" caught the eyes of influential Ontario Legislature IT staff. However, they couldn't locate him before he started first year physics at Brock University. They did find him at the end of first year, though, and lured him out of Niagara to work on provincial computers in Toronto.