The incident occurred back in April of last year but went unnoticed by two employees, one of whom was supposed to verify the transaction, reports Euronews.
The error happened when an employee used a backup interface due to a failure of the main system. On this rarely used platform, the amount field was automatically filled with 15 zeros, which should have been removed before entering the actual amount – $280. However, that did not happen, and the system accepted the amount of $81 trillion, according to the Financial Times, citing internal bank documents.
How was the error discovered?
The mistake was noticed only after 90 minutes by a third employee. As a result, the transfer was canceled, and the money did not leave the bank.
This saved Citigroup, as the bank itself is worth only about $150 billion – hundreds of times less than the erroneous transfer.
Consequences and bank reaction
Citigroup reported this "near miss" incident to the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. "Near miss" means that an error was made but corrected before the money left the bank.
The bank stated that "the control mechanisms timely identified the error," and even if it had not been detected early, the system "would not have allowed the funds to leave the bank." Citigroup emphasized that it continues to reduce the number of manual operations and automate processes.
Series of errors at Citigroup
Although a transfer of such size is unlikely to have gone through, this is not the first instance of gross errors at Citigroup.
In 2023, the bank made 10 similar mistakes involving $1 billion or more, while in 2022, there were 13 such incidents. This indicates ongoing issues with operational management.
The most notorious incident was a $900 million transfer in 2020 to the cosmetics company Revlon. The error led to years of litigation and the resignation of then-CEO Michael Corbat.
Earlier, "Kursiv" reported on what to do for Kazakhs if an electronic transaction mistakenly went to someone else's account.