They say that "money doesn't fall from the sky," however, for this Citigroup client in the United States, that adage truly came true. According to information revealed by media outlets like CNN and People, a customer of the New York-based company received 81 trillion dollars by mistake.
The information disclosed mentions that the bank's client had a pending deposit of 280 dollars. However, due to the error of two employees responsible for overseeing transactions, this person received the millionaire amount for about 90 minutes before it was detected and revoked.
Thanks to the intervention of a third employee, who noticed the millionaire error, the transfer was canceled. This also prevented the account holder from noticing the deposit and using the money.
What about Citigroup?
Regarding the origin of the error, the banking institution did not provide further information about it. However, it did report to the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) the recognition of this incident as an "almost accident."
Similarly, through another statement, Citigroup pointed out that their "detective controls" managed to identify the error and reverse the deposit.
"The bank's detective controls quickly identified the data entry error. Although a payment of this size could not have been executed, our detection controls quickly identified the data entry error between two Citi accounts and reversed the entry," the statement reads.
Therefore, Citigroup revealed that both the bank and the client did not suffer any financial impacts.
Other "Mistakes" by Citigroup
This is not the first time that Citigroup has "starred" in these types of errors. In the previous year, according to CNBC, the banking institution reported 10 similar errors involving amounts exceeding 1 billion dollars.
In 2022, on the other hand, 13 incidents of this type were reported. One of the most viralized was the one committed in 2020, when Citigroup transferred 839 million dollars to the lenders of the cosmetics company Revlon Inc., who refused to return the money because most assumed it was a payment.
Faced with these kinds of oversights, Citigroup has revealed that their risk management remains insufficient. Therefore, the institution has received various fines and sanctions from financial regulatory bodies.
*This article has been automatically translated using artificial intelligence