Finance

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

The incidents highlight Citigroup’s ongoing struggle to improve risk and controls after it was slapped with regulatory penalties and restrictions because of its poor systems.

Photographer: Mario Tama/Getty Images
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Citigroup Inc. almost shifted about $6 billion to a customer’s account by accident after a staffer handling the transfer copied and pasted the account number into a field for the dollar figure.

The near-miss in Citigroup’s wealth-management business magnified the intended amount by more than a thousand times and was detected on the next business day, according to people familiar with the matter. It happened in April, the same month that another part of the bank accidentally credited $81 trillion to a different client.