  We report on CCD photometry in the Johnson B,V and I passbands for 146 stars
in a 9' \times 9' region around the southern aggregate NGC 6994 (C 2056-128),
which appears in the Lynga (1987) catalogue of open star clusters. We argue
that this object is not really an open cluster, but simply a random enhancement
of four bright stars above the background level. This stars sample includes HD
358033 and GSC 05778-0082, together with M 73, which is referred to as a binary
star, but actually represents the whole asterism. Since NGC 6994 is not the
first case (see for instance Carraro and Patat 1995), this raises the
possibility that other open clusters may have been misclassified. We also
suggest that NGC 6994 is unlikely to be an open cluster remnant (OCR).
