Sorry sir, but your account is £100bn in the red

Published on Tuesday 30 December 2008 23:32

A MAN spoke of his shock last night after his bank statement mistakenly showed him to be almost £100 billion overdrawn.

Donald Moffat, 38, was stunned when the figure appeared on his online Barclays account yesterday morning.

The bank said a "technical error" caused some of its customer accounts to be incorrectly debited and has apologised.

A spokeswoman said a small number of people were affected, but she could not confirm how many.

Mr Moffat said his wife noticed the "major discrepancy" after he logged on to his account.

Yesterday, the student and part-time care worker from Irvine in Ayrshire said: "Since I saw it I've been shaking, I've been feeling sick – everything."

He added: "We knew we still had quite a bit left in the account as we checked last night before we went out.

"This morning I went out to get a few things then, when I came back, my account was overdrawn by that amount."

In a statement released yesterday, Barclays said: "Earlier today a technical error caused some customer accounts to be incorrectly debited.

"The problem was immediately identified and corrected within less than an hour, and all affected customer accounts are now showing correct balances.

"No customers will be financially impacted by this error. We apologise for any inconvenience that this might have caused to our customers."