ATM lines at a certain bank in Ethiopia last weekend were out the door after customers discovered they could withdraw or transfer more money than they had in their account(s). A technical glitch was allowing the unlimited withdrawal amounts at the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE), and it took several hours for the bank to stop transactions.
More than $40 million had been withdrawn at that point, most of it reportedly taken by university students. The bank and universities are now encouraging customers to return any of the money that wasn’t theirs, saying there will be no prosecutions for those who do so voluntarily.
While the cause of the glitch has not been officially confirmed, a post by CBE on X, translated by Google, states that it was not the result of a cyber attack. A statement by Ethiopia’s financial regulation body and translated by BBC Amharic says that the glitch happened during “maintenance and inspection activities.”
