The student who popped out to the shops ... and returned to find he was £100billion overdrawn

Banking mad: Donald Moffat found his Barclays account to be £100billion in the red when he checked online

Donald and Wendy Moffat had only logged on to check they had enough money in the bank to pay for the MoT on the family car.



But when they opened the account online, they saw more noughts than they could put a name to. According to Barclays, the couple were £100billion overdrawn.

The shortfall had been caused by two £50billion withdrawals, about which, Mr Moffat, a student and part-time care worker, had no knowledge.

The 38-year-old and his wife, 41, immediately assumed they had been the victims of some kind of fraud. 'We knew we still had quite a bit left in the account as we checked last night before we went out,' he said yesterday.

'This morning I went out to get a few things then, when I came back, my account was overdrawn by that amount. My wife said she had never seen that many numbers on a bank account. She did not know how to pronounce it never mind anything else.

Happily for the couple, their overdraft turned out to be little more than a technical glitch.

And when the father of two contacted Barclays to flag up his concerns, he was told staff already knew about the problem and were in the process of correcting it.

He was less pleased with the £10 compensation they offered. 'I was physically sick with the stress of this, it was affecting my wife and kids – I think it's ridiculous,' added Mr Moffat, of Irvine, in Ayrshire, Scotland, who is studying computing at college.

He is hoping the bank will increase its offer of compensation.

In a statement, 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 this may have caused our customers.'

However, it is not the first time technical glitches at banks have caused distress.

When aerobics instructor Liz Seymour, came home from holiday in 1998, she found a letter telling her she was £121billion overdrawn. The TSB branch, in Hull, warned that her interest payments would be £2.5billion a month.

'I nearly fainted. If I was that much overdrawn, I'd have stayed on holiday for good,' said the 24- year-old. The bank later apologised for its 'clerical error'.