Citigroup recently made a jaw-dropping mistake that has left many scratching their heads—an $81 trillion error when it should’ve been just $280.
The newly unveiled blunder happened last April when a payments employee and a check-monitoring official missed the mistake just before the transaction was cleared for processing the following day. It wasn’t until nearly two hours later that someone else caught the error, and by then, the incorrect payment had already shown up in the customer’s account—only to be reversed hours after that.
The company called the incident a “near miss” to the Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, meaning the mistake didn’t cost anyone anything since the funds could be recouped. But what’s truly baffling is that this isn’t even the first time Citigroup has had these kinds of mishaps. In fact, 2024 alone saw 10 near-misses involving $1 billion or more, according to CNBC.
Citigroup assured NBC News that despite the monumental error, their systems quickly detected the problem and stopped any funds from actually leaving the bank. In a statement, they emphasized their efforts to eliminate manual processes and shift toward more automated controls.
