According to reports, Citigroup mistakenly transferred $81 trillion to a customer's account in April last year. The correct amount should have been $280; the transaction was reversed more than an hour later. According to the report, two employees did not notice the problem with the transfer, and a third employee discovered the problem 90 minutes later.
According to the report, no funds left the bank, and Citigroup disclosed the matter to the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency as a "near miss".
"While it would have been virtually impossible for a payment of this size to be executed, our investigative controls quickly identified an entry error between two of Citi's ledger accounts and we subsequently reversed the entry," a Citigroup spokesperson said in an emailed response. "Our preventive controls would also have prevented the outflow of funds."
The spokesperson added that the matter had no impact on the bank or its clients.
An internal report said Citi had 10 "near misses" of $1 billion or more last year. The report said that although it was down from 13 incidents the previous year, "near misses" of more than $1 billion were rare in the entire U.S. banking industry.