residents to speak out, including one who became a millionaire for the night.

Chef Thajudeen Abdul checked the balance of a Bank of N.T. Butterfield account at the Bank of Bermuda's Sonesta Beach ATM and found his account figure to be $2.8 million.

"That was quite a lot more than I actually have,'' he said, "and I was completely amazed when I saw it.'' Mr. Abdul added that he told his friends to try the same thing and they found their balance figures to be unusually large too. "They all were shown that they had multiple thousands of dollars in their accounts,'' he said.

Another member of the public, who did not wish to be named, lost his card in the Bank of Bermuda ATM at Hamilton's Ferry Terminal after the machine insisted the incorrect PIN had been entered.

He said: "Anyone can make a mistake once -- but I was very careful the second and third times.

"When I called the bank, the woman said she'd been swamped with calls about the same thing.

"I don't know if it was just the one machine or all of them -- but it was a real nuisance as far as I'm concerned.'' Asked what had caused the malfunctions, Bank of Bermuda's Electronic Banking Manager David Lema explained: "Over the weekend we upgraded our ATM system and experienced a few minor difficulties.

"Unfortunately, the upgraded software module caused an unexpected problem with the reporting of non-Bank of Bermuda account balances.

"The bug was quickly identified and removed. We apologise to any cardholders that may have tried to use this service. We have temporarily removed the account balance service for non-Bank of Bermuda cardholders while we rectify the situation.''