In April 2024, an employee of Citigroup (once popularly known as Citibank) was supposed to credit US$280 to a customer’s account. Instead, the American multinational investment bank, which was formed in 1998 after the merger of Citigroup and Travelers, accidentally transfer a jaw-dropping US$81 trillion. The operational error was missed by two employees, before detected by a third employee.

 

Not only the mind-boggling transaction was missed by a payments employee and the second officer, but it took 90 minutes after the US$81 trillion was posted before the third employee detected it. While no funds left the bank, the customer could have transferred the money out or withdraw it had he / she noticed the sudden fortune in his / her bank accounts during that period of time.

 

The stunning mistake by the third-largest banking institution in the United States was disclosed as “near miss” to the U.S. Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. While the bank was lucky to be able to reverse the transfer, the incident could complicate Citi’s efforts to repair its reputation after a string of errors in recent years.

To get a perspective of how massive the mistake could be, Citi’s stock market value was only about US$150 billion. That’s about 540 times more than the bank’s entire market capitalization. As part of its damage control, Citi claimed that its internal “detective controls” flagged the inputting error between two ledger accounts and these controls “would have also stopped any funds leaving the bank”. 

 

Still, it’s an incredible story how a US$280 could be mistaken as a US$81 trillion transaction (US$81,000,000,000,000). It’s hard to imagine it was purely a typo-error for obvious reason. It’s also unbelievable that an employee could enter a transaction value consisting of 12 zeros without realizing the mistake, which then was overlooked by a second officer.

 

Apparently, four transactions amounting to US$280 and intended for a Brazilian escrow account had initially been blocked due to potential sanctions concerns. After the payment was cleared, it remained stuck in Citi’s system and required manual processing. The employee tasked with entering the transaction manually used a backup screen with a pre-populated amount field containing 15 zeros – an entry that was mistakenly left unadjusted, resulting in the astronomical figure.

However, this is not the first time the bank made such grave mistakes. In fact, Citigroup made 10 similar”near misses” of US$1 billion or more in the last one-year period alone. In 2022, a Citigroup employee caused a crash in Europe by accidentally adding a zero to a trade, igniting a sell-off that at one point erased 300 billion Euros (US$322 billion) from European stocks. 

 

In August 2020, the American bank accidentally wired US$900 million to a group of lenders locked in a bitter fight with Revlon, the beauty company, which led to the exit of then-chief executive Michael Corbat in 2021. With some refusing to return the funds, legal action followed, but Citigroup managed to recover only US$400 million. It lost US$500 million as a judge ruled the recipients could keep the unexpected windfall.

 

As a result, U.S. regulators fined Citi US$400 million, saying the bank had failed to address issues in its risk management procedures and internal controls. Jane Fraser, who took over as Citi’s top executive from Corbat in 2021, has described fixing Citi’s regulatory issues as her “top priority.” However, based on the latest US$81 trillion mistake, it appears that the bank has not improved satisfactorily.

The actual problem could be much serious because banks are not required to report these errors to regulators. It was only after an insider whistleblower exposed the US$81 trillion transaction that Citigroup has scrambled to do damage control. The fact that it happened in April 2024, but only revealed today, suggests that the investment bank had been trying to cover up its poor risk management.

 

Another example of near misses includes US$6 billion sent to a US hedge fund by a junior employee at Deutsche Bank in 2015 due to a clerical error. All of the money was recovered the next day. Deutsche also accidentally transferred US$35 billion to an external account in 2018. Again, fortunately, all of the funds were recovered. Though no real money moved, it exposes a larger issue.

 

If one of the world’s largest banks like Citigroup can make a trillion-dollar mega error, how many smaller errors are going unnoticed in the global banking system? Artificial Intelligence (AI) could play a crucial role in detecting unusual transaction patterns, flagging anomalies like an US$81 trillion credit before they pass through any automated systems.

While Citigroup was able to reverse this trillion-dollar error before any damage was done, the event serves as a warning signal for the entire financial industry. In an age where digital banking transactions move at lightning speed, a single glitch can cause massive ripples across the financial ecosystem. Imagine if the lucky customer managed to withdraw just 10% of the US$81 trillion out.

 

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February 28th, 2025 by financetwitter

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