Citigroup Erroneously Credits Client With Staggering 81 Trillion

Citigroup mistakenly credited a customers account with 81 trillion instead of 280 and took several hours to reverse the transaction, highlighting the banks operational challenges that it has been working to resolve, according to a report by the Financial Times published on Friday.

The incident, which happened last April, was overlooked by a payments employee and a second official assigned to verify the transaction before it was approved for processing the next day, as reported by FT, referencing an internal document and two sources close to the situation.

A third employee noticed the mistake approximately one and a half hours post-processing, and the transaction was eventually reversed several hours later, FT noted.

No money was transferred out of Citi, which reported the incident - described as a near miss, where a bank processes an incorrect amount but can recover the funds - to the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency OCC, the article mentioned.

Citi informed said that its detective controls quickly identified the error made when inputting amounts between two ledger accounts and that they reversed the entry, asserting that the incident had no repercussions for either the bank or the client.