Typo Sends $9 Million to Worker’s Account

This was not your average typographical error.

On Monday, an employee in the Los Angeles city treasurer’s office typed an order to wire money to a Port of Los Angeles employee who works in Mexico.

The employee was owed $9,008.55.

But $9,008,550 was wired from a city account to the employee’s account at a U.S. bank in Chula Vista.

A port official initially blamed the error on the office of City Controller Laura Chick. But when Chick heard the allegation, she lost no time setting the record straight.

Her office, she said, did what it was supposed to do: It approved the $9,008.55 expense and passed the approval along to the treasurer’s office.

City Treasurer Joya De Foor confirmed that the mistake occurred in her office Monday morning when an employee made a clerical error.

The typo was caught a few hours later during the 12:30 p.m. review of the day’s transactions, she said. The city immediately contacted the receiving bank and retrieved the money.

De Foor said this was the first time she knew of that her office made a mistake that released too much money.

The department is getting $417,000 in software improvements that might catch such errors electronically, she said.

The employees responsible for the error are apologetic, she said. “I had one of them in today -- he was talking about giving his resignation. He felt terrible.”