Citigroup’s $81 Trillion Blunder.
Citigroup mistakenly credited $81 trillion to a customer’s account instead of the intended $280 before rectifying the error hours later, the Financial Times reported on Friday.
The mistake occurred in April 2024 and initially went unnoticed by two employees responsible for processing the payment. According to an internal account and sources familiar with the matter, the erroneous transaction was cleared for processing the following day. However, a third employee detected the issue approximately 90 minutes after the payment was executed, prompting the bank to reverse the transaction several hours later.
No funds were transferred out of the bank, and Citigroup disclosed the “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 actually have been executed, our detective controls promptly identified the inputting error between two Citi ledger accounts, and we reversed the entry,” a Citigroup spokesperson said in an email statement. “Our preventative controls would have also stopped any funds leaving the bank.”
The incident did not impact either the bank or the customer, Citigroup added.
The Financial Times also reported that Citigroup experienced 10 near misses of $1 billion or more in 2024, an improvement from 13 similar incidents the previous year, citing an internal report.
