I think that all of us have dreamed about the possibility of waking up one day and being insanely rich. It’s interesting to think about, but it actually happened in one case.
It happened when a bank accidentally gave a customer $81 trillion. That’s right, an 81 with 12 zeros. The problem was, that they were only supposed to get $280.
It happened so quickly that the bank almost gave the money before they spotted the mistake and it was just in time before they gave away more than the entire US stock market is worth. It’s a scenario that we’ve played over in our head, but this one was over the top.
When one Citigroup customer was credited by the bank with $81 trillion, you would think that it would get caught quickly. The problem is, that it was actually passed by two different employees before a third staff member finally spotted the huge mistake. It happened when a wrong number was entered into a computer.
If the transaction had gone through, the individual would have received enough money to purchase the largest tech companies in Silicon Valley. They could even buy the entire NFL, including all the teams along with the NBA.
Of course, most of us would probably be happy with $1 trillion, but to make $81 trillion is just a little over the top. Imagine being able to purchase Elon Musk, who is worth $359 billion and you could buy him out 200 times.
Fortunately, there was one employee who managed to catch the error only an hour and a half after it was posted. The large sum of money was adjusted back to the $280 transaction, which is where it should have been.
According to a bank spokesperson: “Despite the fact that a payment of this size could not actually have been executed, 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.
“While there was no impact to the bank or our client, the episode underscores our continued efforts to continue eliminating manual processes and automating controls through our transformation.”
Hopefully, they at least got a reward or some type of compensation for their trouble.
