By Scott Carlson-North Platte Post
NAPERVILLE, Ill.-A University of Nebraska Lincoln student has taken his own life after a glitch in an investment app erroneously showed a large negative balance.
According to Chicago's WGN 9, Alexander Kearns was at his home in Naperville, Illinois when he began investing with the Robinhood app.
WGN reports that, on June 12, Kearns opened the app and saw the he had a negative balance of $730,000.
However, it was reportedly a user interface issue and Kearns actually had a balance of over $16,000.
But, Kearns, took his life as result of the glitch.
A family member of Kearns, Bill Brewster, posted a screenshot showing what Kearns saw, as well as a screenshot of a suicide note allegedly from Kearns.
In the note Kearns writes, "“How was a 20 year old with no income able to get assigned almost a million dollar’s worth of leverage?The puts I bought/sold should have canceled out, too, but I also have no clue what I was doing now in hindsight. There was no intention to be assigned this much and take this much risk, and I only thought that I was risking the money that I actually owned. If you check the app, the margin investing option isn’t even ‘turned on’ for me. A painful lesson. F— Robinhood.”
Brewster wrote in a Twitter post that he believes what was shown was, "his (Kearns') temporary balance until the stocks underlying his assigned options actually settled into his account.”
“When he saw that $730,000 number as a negative, he thought that he had blown up his entire future,” Brewster wrote.
Robinhood issued a public statement saying, "All of us at Robinhood are deeply saddened to hear this terrible news and we reached out to share our condolences with the family over the weekend. We will not share any details regarding the account to respect privacy and confidentiality."
Kearns was a sophomore at UNL studying management.