The Warning That Should Have Saved Citibank

On August 11, 2020, Citibank meant to send Revlon's lenders a routine interest payment of about $7.8 million. Instead, it wired out nearly $900 million of its own money, because two boxes on a screen were left unchecked. Some lenders sent the money back. About half a billion dollars did not come back, and a federal judge ruled they could keep it. This is the full story of the most expensive checkbox in banking history: how three people approved the mistake, why the lenders refused to return the money, the 1991 court case that almost let them win, and the phone call that changed everything on appeal. Every quote and document in this video comes from public court records. CHAPTERS 0:00 The $900 Million Mistake 1:24 The Middleman 3:44 Thirty Cents 5:19 Six Eyes 8:24 The Morning After 10:37 Finders Keepers 14:34 The Phone Call 17:38 The Price of Two Empty Boxes 19:30 If It Happens to You 20:39 What Comes Next Broke The Bank tells true stories about people and companies who beat the money system, and the ones it beat. New documentary every Friday. Narration is AI-generated. This video is for informational and educational purposes only and is not legal or financial advice. PHOTO CREDITS (Wikimedia Commons) 388 Greenwich Street from Battery Park City North Esplanade — Beyond My Ken — CC BY-SA 4.0 Citibank (22431657520) — Mike Mozart — CC BY 2.0 Ron Perelman 2012 Shankbone — David Shankbone — CC BY 3.0 Revlon Farmers Dunedin 2013 — Pear285 — CC0 Times Square empty — Aaron Barlow — CC BY-SA 4.0 Wall-Street-Sign-New-York — Acediscovery — CC BY 4.0 Wipro Electronic City Campus (13945543164) — Ramesh NG — CC BY-SA 2.0 Wilmington Delaware skyline — Tim Kiser — CC BY-SA 2.5 Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse (Home of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and S.D.N.Y.) (7237324632) — Ken Lund — CC BY-SA 2.0 Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, New York — Mike Peel — CC BY-SA 4.0 Jesse M. Furman (Judge) — Public domain (U.S. Senate) Jane Fraser (cropped) — LowneyJen — CC BY-SA 4.0 Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve Board Building — AgnosticPreachersKid — CC BY-SA 3.0 Wall Street - New York Stock Exchange — Carlos Delgado — CC BY-SA 3.0 Milken Family Foundation Award - 39881905411 — Maryland GovPics — CC BY 2.0 Old Delaware State House, The Green, Dover, DE — w_lemay — CC BY-SA 2.0 Yale Law School Library Reading Room (L3) — PENG Yanan (Neo-Jay) — CC BY-SA 3.0 One New York Plaza and New York Battery 17 State Sreet - panoramio — Pablo Costa Tirado — CC BY-SA 3.0 One New York Plaza 0154 — DutchTreat — CC BY-SA 4.0 432 Park Avenue from base — Sir MemeGod — CC0 Sydney skyline at dusk - Dec 2008 — Diliff — CC BY-SA 3.0 Bank of America Plaza (Los Angeles)2 — flickr.com/photos/27767734@N04 — CC BY 2.0 Court of Appeals, 20 Eagle Street, Albany, New York — Beyond My Ken — CC BY-SA 4.0 Courtroom of the New York Court of Appeals — Daniel Case — CC BY-SA 3.0 Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House Jan 2026 — Epicgenius — CC BY-SA 4.0 The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) (53839145812) — ajay_suresh — CC BY 2.0 Vintage Revlon Silvertone Compact and Lipstick Set (8128024047) — Joe Haupt — CC BY 2.0 Montoursville Broad Street — Dincher — CC BY-SA 3.0 Financial District Lower Manhattan photo Don Ramey Logan — Don Ramey Logan — CC BY 4.0 United States one-hundred-dollar bill — Mohammad Mahdi Dourani — CC BY 4.0 Daniel Patrick Moynihan U.S. Courthouse, Manhattan, New York (7237347688) — Ken Lund — CC BY-SA 2.0 Public domain: Love That Red! Revlon 1951 - Suzy Parker; Advertisement for Elizabeth Arden cosmetics 1927; USS Akron (ZRS-4) in flight over Manhattan, circa 1931-1933 — U.S. Navy; Michael H. Park (Judge) — U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee; Charles Revson Obituary; Worms-logo-par-remy-peignot — Rémy Peignot Adapted images are colour-graded and cropped; adaptations of CC BY-SA images are shared under the same license. STOCK FOOTAGE: Pexels (Pexels License) COURT RECORDS (public domain): In re Citibank August 11, 2020 Wire Transfers, No. 20-cv-6539 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 16, 2021), Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law; In re Citibank August 11, 2020 Wire Transfers (Citibank, N.A. v. Brigade Capital Management, LP), No. 21-487 (2d Cir. Sept. 8, 2022); OCC, Consent Order for a Civil Money Penalty, In the Matter of Citibank, N.A., AA-EC-2020-65 (Oct. 7, 2020) Names of individual bank staff are blurred in the court documents shown. #Citibank #Revlon #BankingHistory