Citigroup’s $81 Trillion Oopsie: Who’s Watching the Bank’s Books?
So, picture this: you’re chilling with your banking app, and suddenly your account balance flashes a ludicrous $81 trillion instead of the few hundred bucks you know you have. Sounds like a plot twist from a financial sitcom, right? Well, for one Citigroup customer, that surreal moment turned into reality when the banking giant mistakenly credited a whopping $81 trillion to their account! According to the Financial Times, the blunder took place back in April 2024, and here’s the kicker—multiple Citigroup employees totally missed the glaring error before it could be addressed. A payments employee and a second official were supposed to double-check things, but they dropped the ball on this monumental mess.
A third employee finally caught the mistake an hour and a half later, but by that time, it had already been posted. Citigroup took several hours to reverse the transaction, which was fortunately recognized as an internal fluke before any real money was made to vanish. The bank reassured everyone that no funds exited their system and emphasized their internal controls. “Despite the fact that a payment of this size could not actually have been executed, our detective controls promptly identified the inputting error,” a Citigroup spokesperson said. They touted this as a reminder of their ongoing quest to automate and streamline procedures to prevent human errors—because, apparently, adding an extra zero is a thing.
But this isn’t Citigroup’s first rodeo with mishaps. Remember that time in 2020 when they accidentally wired $893 million to Revlon lenders instead of the due interest payment? Or the scandal in 2022 that was triggered by an employee accidentally tossing in an extra zero, leading to a massive stock sell-off in Europe? These financial faux pas have cost the bank dearly, including a hefty fine of $136 million for dragging their feet on fixing data management issues flagged by U.S. regulators.
As Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser mentioned at a recent stockholder meeting, the bank is making strides in transforming its control systems, but with history on repeat, one has to question—are these improvements coming fast enough?
Sources: Celebrity Storm and People Magazine, Financial Times, The New York Times, Reuters
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