Bank Staff Mistakenly Sends $81 Trillion to Customer Expecting N400,000
- Citigroup was reported to have mistakenly credited $81 trillion instead of $280 to a customer's account last April
- The transfer error went unnoticed for hours before an employee alerted the authorities to take action
- The mistake has raised questions about the bank's operations, and now regulatory agencies are set to scrutinise Citigroup
Legit.ng journalist Dave Ibemere has over a decade of business journalism experience with in-depth knowledge of the Nigerian economy, stocks, and general market trends.
An unidentified Citigroup bank customer received $81 trillion (over N177 quadrillion) in his account.
The customer was supposed to be credited with only $280(about N400,000), but an error occurred, leading to the deposit of millions into the account.
Source: Getty Images
According to the Financial Times, the erroneous transfer occurred in April 2024.
It was revealed that the erroneous payment went unnoticed by both the payments employee and a second official responsible for verifying transactions before clearance.
FT cited an internal report and two people familiar with the incident and said it took a third employee to react quickly to flag the mistake about 90 minutes after processing, leading to a reversal several hours later.
Despite the error, no funds left Citi. However, the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) classified it as a "near miss."
Concerns over Citigroup's operations
Citi said in an emailed statement to Reuters that its “detective controls” promptly identified the ledger inputting error and reversed it.
The bank stated the incident had no impact on its operations or the affected client but FT reports that there would be regulatory scrutiny over its risk management framework.
Source: Getty Images
Keystone bank transfer glitch
In a related development, a Nigerian court froze multiple bank accounts after a Keystone Bank system malfunctioned and artificially inflated balances, enabling unauthorised withdrawals totalling N5.7 billion.
The funds were funnelled through 21 accounts before being dispersed to various secondary recipients.
According to TechCabal, a source familiar with the matter said investigators were tracing the flow of funds and assessing the involvement of multiple banks.
Typically, first-level beneficiaries receive the initial inflow, while second-level beneficiaries handle redistributed funds, adding layers of complexity to the probe.
On February 18, 2025, Justice D.E. Osiagor of the Federal High Court in Lagos ordered banks to block transactions on the affected accounts until further hearings.
Similarly, in January 2025, TechCabal claimed that Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank) obtained a court order to recover N1.9 billion mistakenly credited to customer accounts after an October 2024 system failure.
Fraudsters attack financial institutions in Nigeria
In a previous report by Legit.ng, it was revealed that within the course of three months, from April to June of this year, Nigerian commercial banks lost a total of N42.6 billion to fraud and forgeries.
The total amount of money lost to bank fraud in 2023 was surpassed by the amount lost in just the second quarter of 2024. The banks lost N9.4 billion in total in 2023.
The figures were contained in the Financial Institutions Training Center fraud report.
Proofreading by James, Ojo Adakole, journalist and copy editor at Legit.ng.
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