(Bloomberg) – Days after Citigroup Inc. headlines created for accidentally sending $ 900 million to a group of lenders, opened a Bank of America Corp. in Massachusetts’s account to find an even larger money infusion: $ 2.45 billion.
But the money was never really there.
“This was a display error and nothing more than that,” said Bill of America spokesman Bill Halldin. “It has been corrected.”
The client, psychiatrist Blaise Aguirre, said he initially thought Bank of America would discover the error itself. When that did not happen, he reached out to his relationship manager to inquire about the mysterious money that was visible on both the web and the mobile app of his phone.
This week, after contacting Bloomberg, the bank fixed the issue with Aguirre’s Merrill Lynch account.
It has not been so easy for Citigroup, in its role as governing body on a loan to Revlon Inc., to clear wrong payments sent to the cosmetics giant’s lenders. While some reluctantly returned the funds, the bank is embroiled in a bitter legal battle with hedge funds including Brigade Capital Management and HPS Investment Partners, who refuse to return the payments.
Benjamin Finestone, an attorney for Brigade and HPS, told a judge in the proceedings this week that the companies did not recognize the transfer was a mistake. Citigroup, for its part, said the actions of the funds “threaten the integrity of the function of governing body and confidence in the global banking system.”
At Bank of America, the multi-billion dollar mishap was not the first time customers had accounts. Earlier this month, the creditor had a temporary display issue that caused some online and mobile banking customers to see inaccurate balances. However, that mistake was not as potentially lucrative as Aguirre’s $ 2.45 billion mirror image: Her accounts showed balances of $ 0.
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