Possibly confusion by someone who's used to the long scale? In Danish, as in most non-English European languages, the cognate of "billion" means trillion (10^12).
As it did in British English until, I guess, some time in the 80s or 90s after the Treasury decided to standardise on the US format (edit: apparently that was in 1975).
Like with metrication us Brits adopted it slowly so there were many years of seeing either usage. This wasn't confusing at all. :)
In the US, there is only one meaning for billion. Thousands (10^3), millions (10^6), billions (10^9), trillions (10^12), quadrillions (10^15), etc. And 99% of people would have never heard of milliard or billiard or any other -ard.
In Sweden there's miljon ^6, miljard ^9, biljon ^12, biljard ^15 (also means pool table) and triljon ^18. I once had to ask if "milj" meant miljon or miljard and they refused to answer and said I should look it up in a dictionary. This was a government contract.
However, a lot of Afrikaans-speaking people use the de facto English convention. The newspapers usually get it right though, in contrast to this article.
The UK is the only place in Europe where "billion" means 10^9; in Eastern European languages, there simply isn't an equivalent word, and everywhere else it means 10^12.
The Greek system parallels the short scale, but the terms themselves are derived from the myriad system; δισεκατομμύριο disekatommýrio, 10^9, literally reads twice-hundred-myriad.
Like with metrication us Brits adopted it slowly so there were many years of seeing either usage. This wasn't confusing at all. :)