A bank account holding $1.8 billion has been discovered in the United States, but no one knows who it belongs to

A strange story from the United States. A mysterious bank account has been discovered in South Carolina, containing at least $1.8 billion. One problem: no one knows who it belongs to.

A bank account containing $1.8 billion, whose owner is unknown

It sounds like a dream to many people: a never-ending bank account. Only for the state of South Carolina in the United States, it is now more burdensome. Republican Governor Henry McMaster confirmed last week that “no money was lost” after the surprise discovery. The fact that the owner is unknown appears to stem from ongoing accounting problems, which began after a computer glitch in 2010.

According to Senator Larry Grooms, who chairs a Senate committee investigating the problem, he said:It's like going to the bank and the bank teller telling you we have a lot of money in our safe, but we don't know who it belongs to. Many investigations are now trying to find out the source of the money, but it seems that is easier said than done.

This isn't the first time something like this has happened in South Carolina. More recently, in 2023, the Auditor General was forced to resign after it emerged that $3.5 billion had gone to educational institutions. This mistake ultimately cost him his job.

Cash is also in the account

The strange thing is that there is cash in the account, which means that someone once deposited it in the account. When officials discovered this, surprisingly, no further action was taken. The money appears to have been transferred to another account to balance the books, so to speak. This could have happened again after the state's books turned out to be incorrect.

Regardless, there are still many questions surrounding this mysterious event. What is clear is that this incident is almost certainly related to the lingering effects of the 2010 computer outage. But according to Governor Henry McMaster, there is also good news to report: “In any case, we did not lose any money.” Still nice to the yet unknown owner.