Bank puts $130 trillion in someone’s account

A major bank was supposed to put $450 in a client’s account and got it horribly wrong.

Citigroup accidentally credited an account with $US81 trillion ($130 trillion) instead of $US280 ($450) as it meant to before catching the error, the Financial Times reported.

The error, a “near miss” in banking industry lingo, eluded a payments employee and a second bank official before being caught by a third employee 90 minutes after it posted, the newspaper reported late on Thursday.

The bank said it posted the payment to a client, without specifying what kind of client.

The payment was reversed several hours later and no funds ever left the bank, the newspaper said.

Citigroup, which has $1.7 trillion in assets according to Federal Reserve data, said there was “no impact to the bank or our client,” according to a bank statement.

Signage is displayed outside of a Citigroup Citibank branch

“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,” Citigroup said.

Citi’s snafu stemmed from a system blockage of payments that had to be entered manually under a program that came pre-populated with 15 zeros, according to the Financial Times report.

In July 2024, the Federal Reserve and Office of Comptroller of the Currency fined the bank $136 million for failing to sufficiently upgrade its systems under a 2020 order by the regulators to address poor risk management.

In October 2020, the OCC fined Citigroup $400 million for deficiencies in risk management, data governance and internal controls.

Originally published as Bank puts $130 trillion in someone’s account