People have got their account suspended for transferring and/or receiving a few thousands. Pretty sure he wouldn't be able to transfer anything close to a million before lock down, unless he had clearance.

In any case, it should be noted that the error only occurred in his email statement. At no point in time could he have touched the money, since "So he logged online -- and reality bit back. His account balance read $0."

> Of course, this leads to the obvious question: whatever error-detecting mechanism would be triggered...why isn't it in place at the point which the $92 quadrillion transaction is credited? A simple "customer.balance < TOTAL_KNOWN_SUM_OF_WORLDS_CURRENCY" would seem to suffice

Since it was only in the statement, it was probably an error in the reporting engine, and not in his actual account ledger.