Citigroup credits client’s account with S$109 trillion by mistake, meant to transfer S$378

S$109 trillion credited into client’s account missed by two employees before it was caught

A client of the United States bank Citigroup got an eye-watering and unexpected windfall when they received S$109 trillion into their account.

When the error was finally caught, 90 minutes had passed, with two employees having missed it entirely.

Source: Joshua Lawrence on Unsplash

Erroneous transaction blamed on ‘input error’

The transaction took place in April last year, reported the Financial Times (FT), citing two sources and an internal account of the event.

It was blamed on an “input error” and a “back-up system with a cumbersome user interface”.

In March 2024, a total of US$280 (S$378) over four transactions were meant to be sent to a client’s account in Brazil, but were blocked by its system.

As it remained stuck in the system, an employee was told to manually input the transactions into a rarely used program.

Source: Kaitlyn Baker on Unsplash. Photo for illustration purposes only.

However, the program had a peculiarity: The field for “amount” was pre-filled with 15 zeros.

The employee typing it in should have deleted them, but didn’t, resulting in US$81 trillion (S$109 trillion) being sent instead.

To put this amount into perspective, Tesla founder Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, is worth US$351 billion (S$474 billion), according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Trillion-dollar account transfer missed by 2 Citigroup employees

Worse still, the massive transaction was missed by a payments employee.

Then, a second official, whose job was to check the transaction before it was approved to be processed the next day, also missed it.

Finally, a third employee caught the error after noticing a problem with the bank’s account balances. By that time, 90 minutes had passed.

The transaction was eventually reversed several hours after it took place.

Incident was a ‘near miss’: Citigroup

Citigroup described the error as a “near miss”, referring to an incident when the wrong amount is processed but the bank recovers the funds.

Reporting it to the US Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, it said no funds left the bank, nor was there any impact on the client.

Source: Scott Webb on Unsplash

As its detective controls “promptly identified the inputting error”, leading to the payment being reversed, the controls would also have stopped funds from leaving the bank, it added, noting:

The episode underscores our continued efforts to continue eliminating manual processes and automating controls.

10 ‘near misses’ of S$1.35B of more at bank in 2024

Unfortunately, 10 “near misses” of US$1 billion (S$1.35 billion) or more took place at Citigroup in 2024, according to FT.

This was lower than the 13 “near misses” at the bank in 2023.

The bank was fined US$136 million (S$184 million) last year for not correcting its risk control and data management issues.

Also read: Indian Bank Accidentally Credits S$132M Into Customer Accounts After Technical Issue

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Featured image adapted from Joshua Lawrence on Unsplash.