The US bank, Citigroup recently made headlines after mistakenly crediting a client’s account with a staggering $81 trillion instead of the intended $280.
The colossal error, reported by the Financial Times, was discovered after two employees failed to spot it. Fortunately, a third staff member noticed the mistake 90 minutes later and rectified it before any funds left the bank.
The banking giant reported the incident to the US Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Had the transaction gone through, it would have been one of the largest financial blunders in history.
An amount as massive as $81 trillion would exceed the entire US stock market’s value, which was estimated at $62 trillion at the end of 2024. The error points out the risks involved in financial transactions, even at one of the world’s largest banks.
If the transaction had gone through, it could have theoretically purchased all the assets of Elon Musk more than 200 times over. The billionaire’s net worth currently stands at $343 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.
A Citi spokesperson reassured the public that the error was swiftly handled. “Despite the fact that a payment of this size could not have actually been executed, our detective controls promptly identified the inputting error between two Citi ledger accounts and we reversed the entry,” the spokesperson stated.
It added that “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.”
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This is not the first time Citigroup has faced such issues. In 2020, the bank mistakenly sent $900 million to creditors of cosmetics giant Revlon, leading to two years of legal battles to recover the funds.
More recently, in 2022, a Citi trader accidentally sold $1.4 billion worth of stocks instead of $58 million, causing a flash crash in European markets. The UK later fined the bank £61.6 million over the incident.
The Financial Times reported that Citi experienced 10 near misses of more than $1bn last year, citing an internal report.
In 2014, a trader canceled orders for shares in 42 Japanese companies worth 67.78tn yen (£380bn) before they could be made.
