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Not necessarily. One time I had an ATM malfunction. It did not give me the cash but it was still withdrawn from my account. I called my credit union and they credited my account.

I've worked on a number of ATM related projects (on one now for the Bank I work for ...) and I can tell you what most likely happened in this case.

The device that "grabs" the money and feeds it to the slot where you take your money out malfunctioned. That much I'm 99.999% certain of.

Whoever is responsible to monitor the status of the ATM device (not always your bank, could be a third-party service provider or the device maker themselves such as Diebold) has device monitoring software to detect when a component inside the ATM fails.

In your case, the "grabber" failed and threw a malfunction code to the Network Operations Center responsible to monitor that ATM.

Once that failure was detected and recorded, two things should've happened:

1. The device should've been automatically taken out of service. Occasionally the NOC will attempt to reboot the ATM and restore service. Failing that, and if a component in the device continues to send error codes back to the NOC, it's taken out of service. When an ATM "reboots" it's not always obvious. Even though most run Windows XP/Windows XP embedded you don't see a Windows boot screen. Typically a logo screen or blank screen will be present until the device completes rebooting. If it's taken out of service, an "out of service" notice would be present.

2. Your bank/credit union was notified of the failed transaction and the money credited back to your account. A good bank would've done that automatically. Some banks/credit unions wait until the customer comes in and complains. Either way, they're notified of the transaction failure so putting the money back in your account shouldn't be a hassle. (If it ever is, CHANGE BANKS.)

Now what made this ATM in Portland start spitting out thirty-seven thousand dollars? Most likely a component failure that wasn't properly trapped for and alerted by the ATM Monitoring Software. Whoever's responsible for the ATM Software running on the device and providing monitoring services for it has some explaining to do.