German salesman hits jackpot with computer glitch

                        January 2, 2000 
                        Web posted at: 6:50 AM EST (1150 GMT) 

                        BERLIN (Reuters) -- A German salesman became a millionaire on paper when a
                        malfunctioning bank computer inflated his bank account to more than 12 million marks ($6.2
                        million). 

                        Whether the mistake was caused by the millennium bug or was an unrelated problem was
                        not immediately clear. 

                        The Bild am Sonntag newspaper reported on Sunday that the salesman from Bergheim near
                        Cologne in western Germany found a total of 12,999,997 marks credited to his name when
                        he logged into his home banking computer account. 

                        Not only was the amount wrong, but so was the date -- December 30, 1899. 

                        The millennium bug stems from mainly older computer systems which were programmed to
                        read only the last two digits of a year. If left uncorrected, it was feared systems would
                        misread 2000 as 1900, causing systems to malfunction or even crash. 

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