Bank of America customer opens his phone app to find US$2.45 billion in his account, but the money was never there, not really
- Blaise Aguirre of Massachusetts, a psychiatrist, was on the receiving end of a US$2.45 billion cash infusion when he opened his phone app to his bank account
- Bank of America’s spokesman said the mistake was a “display error” that had been corrected
Days after Citigroup made headlines for accidentally sending US$900 million to a group of lenders, a Bank of America customer in Massachusetts opened his account to find an even bigger cash infusion: US$2.45 billion.
But the money was never really there.
“This was a display error and nothing more than that,” Bank of America spokesman Bill Halldin said. “It’s been corrected.”
The customer, psychiatrist Blaise Aguirre, said he initially figured Bank of America would discover the error itself. When that didn’t happen, he reached out to his relationship manager to inquire about the mysterious money.
This week, after being contacted by Bloomberg, the bank fixed the issue with Aguirre’s Merrill Lynch account.
It hasn’t been as easy for Citigroup, in its role as administrative agent on a loan to Revlon, to erase mistaken payments sent to the cosmetic giant’s lenders. While some willingly sent back the funds, the bank has been locked in a bitter legal battle with hedge funds including Brigade Capital Management and HPS Investment Partners, which refuse to return the payments.