A US bank mistakenly paid out nearly $81 trillion instead of $280 to one of its customers.
The story goes back to April 2024 and is told by the Financial Times this Friday, February 28.
200 times Elon Musk’s fortune
The American bank Citi, formerly Citibank, had credited the account of one of its clients with nearly 81 trillion dollars or 200 times the fortune of Tesla boss Elon Musk.
She was originally supposed to credit him $280.
The erroneous transfer, which escaped the surveillance of two employees, was finally detected by a third after 90 minutes, according to reporters at the Financial Times.
A “near miss”
Fortunately for Citi, no funds left the bank and the incident was reported as a “near miss” to the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
“Despite the fact that a payment of this size could not have been executed, our detective controls quickly identified the entry error between two Citi ledger accounts and we reversed the entry,” a Citigroup spokesperson said.
He added: “Our preventive controls would also have prevented the funds from leaving the bank.”
This is not the first time that such an error has been made by Citi. In 2020, it mistakenly credited nearly $900 million to creditors of the cosmetics company Revlon.
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