Bank accidentally deposited $176 million into thousands of accounts on Christmas Day

A British bank said a technical error caused it to drop a staggering $175 million into thousands of customers' accounts on Christmas Day.

Santander said the £130 million mistake was caused by a "scheduling issue" that caused some payments from corporate clients to be “incorrectly duplicated on the recipients’ accounts.”

The error impacted about 75,000 accounts.

"None of our clients were at any point left out of pocket as a result, and we will be working hard with many banks across the UK to recover the duplicated transactions over the coming days," the bank said Friday.

The task of getting the money back, meanwhile, was reportedly being made more difficult because much of it was deposited in accounts at rival banks, according to the BBC.