Current Insight Community Cases

Essential Datacenter Tips On Application Performance Monitoring

The Importance Of Skilled Immigrants To The American Economy

Help A New Kind of Music Label Revolutionize The Industry

Mandates To Buy American Should Be More Carefully Considered

Navigating The New Business World After This Recession

CwF + RtB

-- get "looooots of t-shirts"

Brought to you by Floor64 and the Techdirt crew.

stories about: "citibank"
News You Could Do Without

News You Could Do Without

by Mike Masnick


Filed Under:
security breach, upsell

Companies:
citibank



Using A Security Breach As An Upsell Opportunity?

from the shameful dept

Danny Sullivan has a blog post blasting Citibank for how it handled a security breach, requiring him to get a new credit card. Apparently a vendor where Sullivan had used the card had a breach, meaning Citibank sent him a new card. But did they tell him which vendor it was so that Sullivan could avoid doing business with them in the future? Of course not. But much more insulting is that when he went to activate the new card, Citibank tried to upsell him on a credit check offering. As Sullivan notes, shouldn't Citibank be offering that to him for free? It's probably cheaper than having to send out thousands of new cards every time a vendor screws up. Of course, when Sullivan points that out to the person on the phone, the person at the other end says "we're just the activation department, you'd have to talk to customer service for that." Of course, if they're just the activation department, why are they doing sales as well? I'm sure the big banks will claim that these sorts of sales processes work in that enough people are suckered into these high margin upsell offerings, but wouldn't it be nice to have a bank that actually treated customers well?

22 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
Scams

Scams

by Mike Masnick


Filed Under:
419, advance fee, nigeria, scams

Companies:
citibank



DEAR CITIBANK: I WOULD LIKE REQUEST TO YOU HELP IN SECURING 27 MILLION DOLLARS US

from the writes-itself dept

As the US government looks to take over a bigger chunk of Citibank, you might wonder what the bank has been doing with its money lately. Apparently, part of it was going to a slightly more ambitious than usual Nigerian 419 scam. The scammer and some colleagues tricked Citibank into believing they represented the National Bank of Ethiopia, that country's central bank -- and convinced Citibank to then transfer $27 million to accounts they controlled. It doesn't sound like the scam actually worked in the end -- as questions arose, and the receiving banks transferred the money back eventually. Also, the supposed mastermind behind the scam has now been arrested. But, apparently, 419 scammers have figured out that, given how well various banks have managed their money over the last few years, they're just as good as targets, compared to clueless spam recipients.

22 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
Scams

Scams

by Mike Masnick


Filed Under:
419, advance fee, law firm, nigeria, scams

Companies:
citibank



Lawyer Sues Citibank For Not Stopping Him From Losing Money In Nigerian Scam

from the blame-goes-around dept

A lawyer in Houston is suing Citibank after he got scammed in a variation on the classic Nigerian email scam. There are a few interesting tidbits here that are worth discussing. First, the details: the lawyer, who does collections work, was contacted via email by a company that claimed to be a Japanese company that was trying to collect money from four clients in the US -- offering a contingency fee to the lawyer for help in getting the customers to pay up. Soon after that, the "Japanese company" claimed that one client had agreed to pay some of what it owed -- and it sent the law firm a check for $367,500. Citibank said the check cleared, and the law firm wired $182,500 to the company. Of course, it later turned out that the check was fraudulent, and the law firm was out the $182,500.

This is a variation on a popular version of the Nigerian email scam. The way it usually works is that the scammer buys something that's for sale... and then sends a check that's for significantly more than the purchase price using some sort of excuse. Once the check "clears," the seller is asked to wire back the excess money. This version is interesting in that it's slightly more sophisticated -- carefully going after law firms that do collections. Rather than being a totally "out of the blue" situation, they worked hard to make it seem like business as usual until the scam is done. Sneaky.

While it's easy to mock the lawyer for getting tricked, the basic version of the scam and this more sophisticated version both rely on a very unclear part concerning check processing. Most people assume that once a check "clears" it's confirmed as valid. That's not true. Banks clear the check before it's actually validated, and the scammers exploit both the time between these two events and the fact that most people assume (or are told) that once a check clears, the money is definitely theirs. There are a few ways to solve this that banks could take. They could not clear the check until it's absolutely declared valid. Or, they could make it much clearer that, while the money is available, the check has not been validated and the money could be pulled. Since most banks do neither, the guy's lawsuit against Citibank is at least somewhat understandable -- though, it's unlikely a court will agree with him.

66 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
Scams

Scams

by Mike Masnick


Filed Under:
positive balance, sweeping

Companies:
citibank



Citibank Had A Program To Take Money From Customers?

from the positive-balance-means-it's-ours dept

A few years back, that I accidentally added an extra zero to a bill I paid for phone service. The company automatically credited the account, and a quick call got them to send a check with the overpaid amount. I know others who have accidentally paid a bill twice, or simply overpaid a bill because they didn't have the exact amount of the bill handy and wasn't able to look up the specifics. In most cases, the companies in question would just credit the difference. However, it turns out that Citibank had a different idea. It apparently decided that if you overpaid a bill, you really were just donating free money to Citibank executives' bonus fund. The company actually had a "sweeping" software that would scan customer accounts for a positive credit and simply wipe it off their account, transferring the money to Citibank's general account. This wasn't just a small thing either -- it went on for more than a decade, and the whistleblower who brought it up was fired. And, if you thought I was joking about the executive bonus fund, an executive from Citibank told investigators: "the sweep program could not be stopped because it would reduce the executive bonus pool." Of course, now the state of California has "convinced" Citibank to pay back all that money, plus some interest.

54 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
Search Techdirt
And now, a word from our Sponsors..



Popular Posts
Poll

Which Internet Concern Worries You The Most?

 

 

 

 

 

 


Add Techdirt RSS To Your Reader
rss Add Techdirt to your Bloglines
Add Techdirt to your Google Add Techdirt to your My Yahoo
Add Techdirt to your Netvibes Add Techdirt to your Newsgator
Subscribe to Techdirt's Daily Email Newsletter

Techdirt's Daily Email Newsletter

Older Stuff

Tuesday

1:56pm: Jury Says Fictional Character Can Be Libelous (28)
12:44pm: Spam King Alan Ralsky Gets Four Years In Jail (26)
11:39am: Publishers Getting The Wrong Message Over eBook Piracy (39)
10:28am: Calling For An Independent Invention Defense In Patents (26)
9:12am: Microsoft Tries To Silence Revelation Of Bing Cashback Flaws; Leads To Revelation Of Other Problems (41)
8:03am: Don't Blame Facebook For Some Kids Beating Up Another Student (61)
6:46am: Hulu Telling Sites To Stop Embedding So Much (44)
5:00am: Once Again, If The Gov't Has Data, It Will Be Abused (42)
2:53am: As Expected, Social Networking Generation Running For Office Face Their Permanent Record Online (31)
12:55am: IMAX Sues Cinemark For Building Competing System... While Being An IMAX Customer (14)

Monday

10:26pm: Filmmaker Allowed To Use The Name Rin Tin Tin To Describe Rin Tin Tin (6)
8:25pm: Senators Begin Questioning ACTA Secrecy (32)
6:34pm: Brazil E-Voting Machines Not Hacked... But Van Eck Phreaking Allowed Hacker To Record Votes (15)
5:08pm: FCC Doesn't Think The Lack Of Competition Is A Major Barrier To Broadband? (36)
3:49pm: Heads Of Major Movies Studios Claiming They Just Want To Help Poor Indie Films Harmed By Piracy (47)
2:38pm: USPTO Convinced By Amazon That Online Gift Giving Patent Is Legit (19)
1:31pm: Tiburon Approves Recording Every Car That Enters/Leaves... Despite More Evidence Of Traffic Camera Abuse In UK (89)
12:18pm: Label Exec Arrested For Not Using Twitter To Disperse Crowd At Mall To See Singer (53)
11:01am: Spanish Court Dismisses Complaint From Nintendo Against Counterfiet DS Cartridges, Since They Add Functionality (12)
9:55am: Dear PR People: If Your Exec Has A Comment, Our Comments Are Open (25)
8:44am: What Kind Of Mickey Mouse (And Donald Duck) Lawsuits Are These? (23)
7:30am: Prosecutors Ending Lawsuit Against Lori Drew (13)
6:06am: Dear Rupert: You Don't Succeed By Making Life More Difficult For Users (70)
4:20am: ESPN Writer Suspended From Twitter (59)
2:10am: School Can't Handle Critical Community Message Board; Sends Legal Nastygram (21)

Friday

7:39pm: Liberian Laws Are A Secret Due To Copyright; Even The Gov't Doesn't Have Them (43)
6:56pm: Lily Allen: It's Ok To Sell My Counterfeit CDs, Just Don't Give My Music For Free (97)
6:10pm: EFF Looks To Bust Bogus Podcasting Patent; Needs Prior Art (34)
5:28pm: Google Blocking Set Top Boxes From Showing YouTube Unless They Pay Up? (65)
4:44pm: Entertainment Industry: Yes, Please Keep Negotiating Secret Copyright Treaty To Save Our Asses (43)
More arrow
Quick Links
Close
E-mail It