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Citi pays $18M for questioned credit card practice
By MADLEN READ – Aug 26, 2008
NEW YORK (AP) — Citigroup Inc. will pay nearly $18 million in refunds and settlement charges for taking $14 million from customers' credit card accounts, California's attorney general said Tuesday.
Citigroup will make refunds to the 53,000 customers affected, and pay $3.5 million in damages and civil penalties to the state of California, which had been investigating the questionable practices for three years, the attorney general said.
The bank will also pay 10 percent interest to California customers, who accounted for $1.6 million of the money "swept" out of accounts and into a Citi fund between 1992 and 2003.
Citigroup's "account sweeping program" automatically removed positive balances from customers' credit card accounts, Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. said. For instance, if a customer double-paid a bill by mistake or refunded a purchase for credit, that positive balance was then taken from the customer without notification, Brown said.
"The company knowingly stole from its customers, mostly poor people and the recently deceased, when it designed and implemented the sweeps," said Brown in a statement. "When a whistleblower uncovered the scam and brought it to his superiors, they buried the information and continued the illegal practice."
Citigroup, however, said in a statement that it voluntarily stopped the computerized "sweeping" practice in 2003, and that it also voluntarily began refunding customers before the settlement.
"We take issue with the state's characterization of our conduct and the parties' voluntary settlement," Citigroup said in a statement.
"This agreement affirms our actions, and we are continuing to make full refunds to all affected customers," Citigroup said.
Citigroup shares rose 23 cents, or 1.3 percent, to $17.84 Tuesday.
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Leah Remini boobs are nice and big
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her dad is George Remini, an Italian-American owner of an asbestos company
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Los Angeles was founded September 4, 1781, by Spanish governor Felipe de Neve as El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de la Porciúncula (The Village of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels of Porziuncola). It became a part of Mexico in 1821, following its independence from Spain. In 1848, at the end of the Mexican-American War, Los Angeles and California were purchased as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, thereby becoming part of the United State
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Spanish (español (help·info)) or Castilian (castellano) is an Indo-European, Romance language that originated in northern Spain, and gradually spread in the Kingdom of Castile and evolved into the principal language of government and trade. It was taken to Africa, the Americas, and Asia Pacific with the expansion of the Spanish Empire between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Today, between 322 and 400 million people speak Spanish as a native language,[12][6] making it the world's second most-spoken language by native speakers
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