We’ve all misplaced some pocket change at one point or another, but what about billions?
I don’t think so.
Well, this American state is having a major head scratch moment after realising it has a whopping $1.8 billion (that's £1.4 billion to you and me) in its bank account.
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That’s right, South Carolina has racked up an enormous amount of wealth over the last decade and nobody has any idea where it's come from.
I think I can speak for everyone when I say that this is a dream only us paupers could have. But for SC, not so much.
Republican Gov. Henry McMaster went on to confirm last week that 'no money was lost' after the bizarre find.
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Apparently, the bank account might be the result of ongoing accounting troubles for the state, which all stemmed from a computer system transition in the late 2010s.
Bloody technology.
Republican Sen. Larry Grooms - the person leading a Senate panel investigating the problem - said: "It's like going into your bank and the bank president tells you we have a lot of money in our vault but we just don't know who it belongs to."
Now, investigative accountants are working to try and make some sense of what happened, though it's proving rather difficult.
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Elected Republican comptroller general Richard Eckstrom even ended up stepping down from his role in 2023 after his agency double posted money in higher education accounts.
This was an incredible $3.5 billion error that was all on paper, costing Eckstrom his job.
The South Carolina Daily Gazette reported that the paper error started in 2007 and is still an issue today.
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The current issue is that the money in the account actually includes cash placed in a bank account.
Now lawmakers are asking why the money was in the bank account in the first place. Good question.
Also, they want to know why officials never addressed the problem once they discovered it. Another good question.
It appears that when the state's books were up in the air, money was moved over from somewhere into an account that helped balance the books.
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Grooms said: "Politics really shouldn't come into play. People prefer their accountants not be crusaders.”
A lot of questions still remain regarding this strange occurrence, with state leaders still kept out of the loop about where the nearly two billion came from, if that information is even available anyway.
"It does not inspire confidence. But the good news is no money was lost," Republican Gov. Henry McMaster stated.
I suppose a win is a win.
Britt Jones