Citi Copy-Paste Error Almost Sent $6 Billion to Wealth Account

Citigroup nearly credited about $6 billion to a customer's account in its wealth-management business by accident. From a report: The near-error occurred after a staffer handling the transfer copied and pasted the account number into a field for the dollar figure, which was detected on the next business day, the report added. The wealth division's near-miss was reported to regulators and the company has since set up a tool to help vet large, anomalous payments and transfers, according to the report. The error was related to an attempted transfer of funds between internal accounts, the report said. Last week, the Financial Times reported that Citigroup erroneously credited $81 trillion, instead of $280, to a customer's account and took hours to reverse the transaction.

Data input validation?

[OffTheLip]

Seems like a generous input value would be much less than this copied data. Data sanitation/validation is so passe I guess.

Sanitize Your Inputs

[kc-guy]

A near-miss implies the accident was avoided. In this case it happened, after failing both human-based procedural controls, and basic technology controls like evaluating the size of the transfer, or comparing values of various fields to catch copy-paste... which was for some reason, even allowed when entering data into the field. But it's comforting to know that even though it takes weeks for Amazon and Walmart to process a refund, the banks can sweep their own mistakes under the rug faster than you can sa

Re:Sanitize Your Inputs

[XanC]

I would wager that copy/pasting of amounts and account numbers prevents an awful lot more errors than it enables.

Re:

[mysidia]

which was for some reason, even allowed when entering data into the field

Copy and paste or digital scanning from the source media should actually be the ONLY allowed manner of an employee inputting data as-opposed to a customer typing in the amount for the transfer.

They should just have checks to ensure the wrong type of data can't be pasted into an amount column.

I would suggest they start by putting a LETTER in every Account number. For example I seem to recall there's some brokerage that starts every

Re:

[tlhIngan]

A near-miss implies the accident was avoided. In this case it happened, after failing both human-based procedural controls, and basic technology controls like evaluating the size of the transfer, or comparing values of various fields to catch copy-paste... which was for some reason, even allowed when entering data into the field. But it's comforting to know that even though it takes weeks for Amazon and Walmart to process a refund, the banks can sweep their own mistakes under the rug faster than you can say

My retirement plan is...

[sacrilicious]

... I'm going to fire up an account with Citibank, keep the absolute minimum balance in it allowed, and hope I get to be the next lucky recipient!

time to dump Oracle FLEXCUBE!

[Joe_Dragon]

time to dump Oracle FLEXCUBE!

I almost tripped over today

[greytree]

But I caight myself in time and carried on with my day.

Great story guys, real news for nerds, totally what I...

żzzzzzz

It's funny how when a bank fucks up

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

they get to hit Ctrl-Z and undo the mistake. But when ordinary people get hacked and their accounts are emptied or get scammed out of their life's savings, there's no recourse.

Re:

[anoncoward69]

Of course when you own the computer system that runs the bank you can make it do whatever you want. I wonder how many instances of a few too many zeros or a decimal point a few digits out of place have just been completely overlooked? It's a computer system, they can just make dollars appear out of thin air to correct any "mistakes"

Re:

[mysidia]

they can just make dollars appear out of thin air to correct any "mistakes"

Well books do have to balance at some point. When I go to the bank and withdraw cash at an ATM: physical bills have to come from somewhere.

Also if the account they accidentally overpaid a billion$ to turns out to be an anonymous prepaid card.. the physical bills could have already been withdrawn from the account by the time they realize mistakes to go and hit Ctrl+Z. By that point they're looking at a guaranteed mistake that

Re:

[anoncoward69]

Common you know that balancing the books has got to be a near impossible feat. At any point in time there's likely billions of dollars moving around the system and from bank to bank in pending status its probably nearly impossible. Probably the only true way to do it would to be shut down the banking system for a couple days allow all pending transactions to post and then audit everything.

Re:

[anoncoward69]

Hell, I'd be willing to bet there's all kinds of funny stuff that the banks are doing with the time it takes cash to clear moving from one bank to the other. If it ever got out what was really going on the public would probably be shocked. It's probably shit that if any other regular citizen figured out a way to pull it off, we'd be thrown in the slammer for fraud. I would not be shocked if BS like the following was playing out. Customer at Bank A transfers $1mill to Bank B via ACH. Bank A knows its going t

Re:

[mysidia]

I would not be shocked if BS like the following was playing out. Customer at Bank A transfers $1mill to Bank B via ACH. Bank A knows its going to take a couple days to clear so sits on that $1mill to gain a couple days interest off it before clearing it out on their side.
Yes. They always do this. Bank A could move the money instantly, but they are going to savor the interest as long as they can and delay settlement until as close to the deadline as their system makes possible. As for Bank B: They sta

Re:

[XanC]

Do you believe that banks keep the value of their deposits in bills in their ATM?

If somebody's account ends up being bumped up by a couple grand because of some random mistake, there's no particular reason that books have to balance. ATMs won't fail.

Again?

[Fly Swatter]

At least read your own site.

Re:

[DaFallus]

Last week's incident it was $81 trillion dollars being transferred to an account instead of $280. This one was only $6 billion.

Re:

[anoncoward69]

Slow news day. Or distraction from something else going on.

Excel Apocalypse

[devslash0]

I bet it had something to do with Excel and auto formatting. Wrong cell type and scientific notation?

True Story...

[BringsApples]

...One time I almost fed my dog, cat food. OMG guys, it was so crazy.

Sure, this story doesn't stir any emotions about the how one small mistake can result in all sort of insanity, but it's true AF.

who cares?

[MooseTick]

Dumb mistakes like this don't really matter. Its not like the person who gets billions or trillions of dollars can just withdraw it and be rich. The banks ALWAYS get their money back and all these incidents end up being a one day news article.