Talk about a short-lived windfall!
A banking customer was mistakenly credited $81 trillion in their account when it was supposed to be just $280 - with one zero.
Citigroup made the payment in April and it was initially missed by two employees, according to CNBC. It was caught about 90 minutes after the transfer. It took several hours to reverse and get the money back.
The incident was reported to the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency as a “near miss,” according to reports.
The name of the person who received the money was not revealed.
“Despite the fact that a payment of this size could not actually have been executed, our detective controls promptly identified the inputting error between two Citi ledger accounts, and we reversed the entry,” Citi told NBC News in a statement. “Our preventative controls would have also stopped any funds leaving the bank. While there was no impact to the bank or our client, the episode underscores our continued efforts to continue eliminating manual processes and automating controls through our Transformation.”
A “near miss” is categorized as when a bank processes the wrong amount, but is able to recover the funds.
Citigroup had 10 near misses of at least $1 billion last year.
It’s not the bank’s first high-profile transfer. It once sent $900 million in a case involving the debt of makeup group Revlon. That led to its ouster of then-CEO Michael Corbat, according to CNBC.
Successor Jane Fraser said improving risk and control was a priority, but the bank was fined $136 million last year for not making enough headway on the fixes, the outlet noted.
