by 1 Cylivers
- The New York bank that lost $200 million overnight? The Bank of NY, in 1985, which found itself overdrawn by $32 billion in one day because of a data base overflow.
- The Russian missiles which were coming over the Arctic horizon towards North America, placing the US retaliatory missile forces on red alert? The early warning system actually had detected the moonrise.
- The new $200 million claims processing system at BCBS Wisconsin, which sent out over $60 million in unwarranted and duplicate payments? For example, when a clerk entered "none" in a data field, the system sent hundreds of checks to the nonexistent town of None, Wisconsin.
- The farmer in the wilds of Nebraska who received a dozen truckloads of the same issue of Time magazine? The publisher's computer system for printing address labels was stuck in a loop and spent several hours printing the same address.
- In 1992, Empire BCBS in New York City paid out $500 million in fraudulent or erroneous claims. Officials at Empire did not bother to check the claims because their computer data bases were outdated. Management had made the decision that it would be cheaper to simply pay the claims than to re-program their computers to check them.
- In May, 1992, Pepsi heavily advertised a "you could be a millionaire" promotion in the Philippines. In this promotion, anybody who found a Pepsi bottle cap marked with the number 349 would win one million pesos (about $40,000). While only one bottle cap was intended to be marked with the number 349, in fact 80,000 were issued (these equate to $32 billion in prize money).
- "In one of the biggest computer errors in banking history, Chemical Bank mistakenly deducted about $15 million from more than 100,000 customer accounts on Tuesday night, causing consternation among its customers. The problem stemmed from a single line in an updated computer program...that caused the bank to process every withdrawal and transfer at its automated teller machines twice." The New York Times, 2/18/94
- In April, 1994, a computer systems analyst won $620,000 in less than 10 minutes playing keno (a software-based game of chance) at a Montreal casino. After three wins, the casino operators forcibly ejected the winner without payment. The casino was later forced to honor the bets and pay in full, plus interest. The winner had recorded the sequence of prior winning numbers, analyzed them on his home 286 computer, and had discovered a predictable repeating pattern.
- Did you hear about the SCUD missile which killed 28 Marines during the 1991 Gulf War? A Patriot missile which was sent to intercept the Scud failed to do so. It flew right past the Scud but its pattern recognition software -- designed to identify targets -- did not recognize the incoming missile.
