Posted on 02/28/2025 12:01:51 PM PST by where's_the_Outrage?
One of America’s biggest banks accidentally transferred more than $80 trillion (£64 trillion) to a customer’s account after a “fat finger” input error by an employee.
Citigroup, one of America’s “big four” lenders, erroneously transferred $81 trillion to the account in April last year instead of the $280 requested because of a keyboard mistake by a bank staffer.
The huge sum, worth more than 20 times Britain’s entire gross domestic product (GDP), was approved after being checked by two of the bank’s employees, before being sent to the customer account the following morning.
The payment was only flagged after a third employee noticed a problem with the Wall Street giant’s overall balances, 90 minutes after the payment between two separate Citi accounts had been made, the Financial Times reported.
Citi successfully reversed the transaction a few hours later, with no funds actually leaving the lender’s coffers, as the $81 trillion transaction was between two of the bank’s own accounts.
A Citi spokesman said: “Our detective controls promptly identified the inputting error between two Citi ledger accounts and we reversed the entry. Our preventative controls would have also stopped any funds leaving the bank.”
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Maybe they’re speaking to us in code.
“Bank accidentally credits customer with $81 trillion instead of $280”
That actually happened to me once, except it was a brokerage, and it was on New Years Day. On January 2nd, first thing in the morning, it, alas, was all gone (I checked). I’m not sure being a billionaire for a day felt any different than before or after. Maybe if I was able to spend some of it.
Odd how money was created with a keyboard out of thin air
I had a co-worker get his bank statement back in the 1990’s and his eyes bugged out of his head, he had over $1 million dollars in his bank account, well and above the salary of a psychology instructor and pastor. Our office was on the third floor of this banking institution and he went down stairs to ask them if indeed he was a new millionaire or had they screwed up with a number and decimal like he suspected.
They were highly embarrassed when he showed them the statement and indeed he had a million dollars in his account. They apologized and he was a good sport about the whole thing, getting someone to take his picture and his statement showing that for a brief few days he was a millionaire.
According to Grok if I worded the question correctly the interest earned for 90 minutes at 1% on 80 trillion dollars would be approximately 138 million dollars
3% interest for 1 day would still be 6.6 Billion
That happened to me once. I withdrew $60 from the ATM and my available balance was $363,000, when I knew I had about $300. I saved the receipt, and the next day it was gone. They have algorithms running to catch that stuff. It was a grocery chains account that got fat fingered into my account. Nice while it lasted.
What sort of keyboard mistake could possibly do that? Its not like a bank keys in transactions with exponents.
Those are some really fat fingers there.
$80 trillion dropped into your account for 6 hrs.
0.1% interest annually
260 business days...
0.00038% per day...
6 of 8 hrs...
0.00038% * 6 / 8 == 0.000288% interest in 6 hrs
$80 T * 6 hrs of interest == ...
80,000,000,000,000 * 0.00000288 == $ 230,769,230.77
This is not a mundane detail, MICHAEL!!
The bank is probably run by FJB’s Treasury Secretary.
Might need Musk and DOGE efficiency experts team to help sort things out . . .
Interesting figures, but more likely the financial institutions uses the end of the day balance for interest calculations.
When I was a poor student I went to the bank to make a deposit. The teller looks twice at the monitor and says something like “The big deposit has cleared”. Since I had maybe a few hundred to my name I asked him “What big deposit?” He looks around, leans over the counter and whispers “The million dollar one”. My mind raced considering whether my small deposit should become a large withdrawal. After about 5 seconds of weighing the options and consequences I decided to come clean and tell him I had made no big deposits.
A “fat finger” normally turns $280.00 into $2,800.00.
How many “fat fingers” does it take to turn $280.00 into $81,000,000,000,000?
The clerk probably mistook the customer for “The Big Guy.”
“Here, sir, let me deposit your 10% to your account. Have a nice day.”
Will that fit in the tube they pass through the drive up window?
For a day?
He could probably retire on two SECONDS of accrued interest.
I doubt, seriously, the bank had 8.1x10^12 dollars equivalent at the ready. Someone hacked the bank and did this. No clerk did this, and two people didn’t approve it either.
I had the reverse problem in 1977. I’d been saving about 80% of my paycheck in my field service engineering job because all my living, car, room, and board expenses were covered while I was in the field. I’d socked away $25,000 in just over four years.
I returned to San Francisco, dropped into the Crocker Bank branch and they said “We have no record of your account.” I protested and the idiot branch manager said “Well, you must have bounced a check.”
I wrote to all the bank execs and the bank examiner in Sacramento. Soon thereafter, I was treated like royalty by the branch manager. I really wanted to get his ass fired.
They credited my account with the missing interest but couldn’t do a simple calculation and offered me less than 10% of what was owed me. I wrote out the math for them. The branch manager looked at it and said “He’s right.” and ordered the teller to credit me with what I had calculated.
It was stressful watching over four years of diligent savings go POOF!
It would have been nice to get the interest, even at 1%, for that amount, and even pro-rated for that amount of time.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.