Banks are keeping closer tabs on your reputation than ever before

[Anonymous]

What about those "Friends" who join you on your vacation because everything is already paid for! lol

[Anonymous]

I know I guy that borrowed $20 from me in HS and never paid it back. Interestingly, he has never attended a HS reunion. Coincidence? I think not!

[Anonymous]

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@gdale6 wrote:

• Over the past year, stories have piled up in online communities of credit-card super users suddenly having their accounts shut down by JPMorgan Chase.
• The case of Bryan Sequeira seemed similar at first, but upon closer inspection, it proved particularly unusual and confounding.
• Sequeira, who has a strong credit profile and doesn't game the points system to maximize rewards, was informed this summer that his accounts would be terminated by Chase.
• But even after his appeal, the company not only declined to reinstate him, but refused to disclose why his account was being closed in the first place.
• Unspooling the mystery behind Sequeira's shutdown shines a light on the broad power that credit-card companies have to cut ties with customers, as well as how banks, amid steep fines and intense scrutiny from regulators, are using technology to keep closer tabs on customers' reputations than ever before.

https://www.businessinsider.com/mystery-of-chase-sapphire-cardholder-who-was-shutdown-and-never-told...

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I heard about him. Additional reserch has uncovered that the "reputational risk" to which Chase alluded as being the basis for their decision was valid based on this:

"One of the nation’s largest vendors of electronic health records software, eClinicalWorks (ECW), and certain of its employees will pay a total of $155 million to resolve a False Claims Act lawsuit alleging that ECW misrepresented the capabilities of its software, the Justice Department announced. The settlement also resolves allegations that ECW paid kickbacks to certain customers in exchange for promoting its product. ECW is headquartered in Westborough, Massachusetts."In its complaint-in-intervention, the government contends that ECW falsely obtained that certification for its EHR software when it concealed from its certifying entity that its software did not comply with the requirements for certification. For example, in order to pass certification testing without meeting the certification criteria for standardized drug codes, the company modified its software by “hardcoding” only the drug codes required for testing. In other words, rather than programming the capability to retrieve any drug code from a complete database, ECW simply typed the 16 codes necessary for certification testing directly into its software. ECW’s software also did not accurately record user actions in an audit log and in certain situations did not reliably record diagnostic imaging orders or perform drug interaction checks. In addition, ECW’s software failed to satisfy data portability requirements intended to permit healthcare providers to transfer patient data from ECW’s software to the software of other vendors. As a result of these and other deficiencies in its software, ECW caused the submission of false claims for federal incentive payments based on the use of ECW’s software."Under the terms of the settlement agreements, ECW and three of its founders (Chief Executive Officer Girish Navani, Chief Medical Officer Rajesh Dharampuriya, M.D., and Chief Operating Officer Mahesh Navani) are jointly and severally liable for the payment of $154.92 million to the United States. Separately, Developer Jagan Vaithilingam will pay $50,000, and Project Managers Bryan Sequeira, and Robert Lynes will each pay $15,000."

Source: U.S. Department of Justice website, Electronic Health Records Vendor to Pay $155 Million to Settle False Claims Act Allegations, May 31, 2017.

This is significant because this ruling came before he posted about his Chase accounts being closed (according to the article, he made the post this past June). It is plausible that he was fully aware of the consequences that would accompany this financial liability he incurred due to his unethical behavior - including his financial accounts being terminated since what he did is tantamount to fraud. 

[Anonymous]

O Oh.. by this post alone sounds like accounts have been hacked...

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

O Oh.. by this post alone sounds like accounts have been hacked...

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I don't follow... How'd you reach that conclusion?

[trusty]

Is there a version of this article that doesn't require signing up for paid subscriptions?

[Anonymous]

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@trusty wrote:
Is there a version of this article that doesn't require signing up for paid subscriptions?

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There are several, per Google. Here's one. And another one about the judgment..

[trusty]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@trusty wrote:
Is there a version of this article that doesn't require signing up for paid subscriptions?

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There are several, per Google. Here's one. And another one about the judgment..

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Thanks a bunch. Good read.

It seems like this kind of thing should be against regulations. Shutting cardholders down for paying good-faith settlements to other parties, for non-debt related items, should be irrelevant to one's relationship with any given bank... unless the bank in question was the aggrieved party in the settlement.

If anything, the fact that he could afford to pay a $15,000 settlement, for something that he was purportedly not personally responsible for... is more indicative of his ability to handle his obligations, rather than the alternative.

Just goes to show, you cannot regulate everything, including common sense. In the end, it's still the wild west out there.

The excessive prevalence of big-brother algorithms - designed to protect - are probably going to be the death of privacy protections, in civilized society. Talk about irony.

[Anonymous]

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@trusty wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@trusty wrote:
Is there a version of this article that doesn't require signing up for paid subscriptions?

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There are several, per Google. Here's one. And another one about the judgment..

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Thanks a bunch. Good read.

It seems like this kind of thing should be against regulations. Shutting cardholders down for paying good-faith settlements to other parties, for non-debt related items, should be irrelevant to one's relationship with any given bank... unless the bank in question was the aggrieved party in the settlement.

If anything, the fact that he could afford to pay a $15,000 settlement, for something that he was purportedly not personally responsible for... is more indicative of his ability to handle his obligations, rather than the alternative.

Just goes to show, you cannot regulate everything, including common sense. In the end, it's still the wild west out there.

The excessive prevalence of big-brother algorithms - designed to protect - are probably going to be the death of privacy protections, in civilized society. Talk about irony.

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I get (and agree with) your point to some extent. However, the judgment seems to insinuate that he was personally responsible, among others; ergo, the reputational risk. 

[trusty]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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I get (and agree with) your point to some extent. However, the judgment seems to insinuate that he was personally responsible, among others; ergo, the reputational risk. 

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But, how so?

Someone that pays what comes out to 0.0001 of a percent of the company's settlement... cannot nearly be considered to be responsible. As it is, the settlement was a "no fault" settlement, which means that paying the fine produced absolution from any further legal backlash.

Are we to believe that banks will be obligated to cancel anyone that ends up paying a “no fault” settlement to anyone, without any prosecution or due process? This is a slippery slope, that only leads to ridiculous and unenforceable unintended consequences. There's also far too much room for mistakes to be made, with the potential unfair adverse action of unwitting parties to things that show up on the internet, without any actual proof of culpability.

Conversely, how many executives, with gilded parachutes, and private banking accounts, have these banks kicked off of the rolls? It would actually be really instructive to find out, if any of the other parties that paid much larger settlements are still with this bank. My guess is probably not everyone in the company received adverse action, as the little ole' IT fall guys, that got singled out... for financially strategic decisions that came from the top, and not from the IT department. Obviously, if the company doesn't fund the fixes to their system, the two IT guys cannot do it all themselves.

This is just a classic case of corporate risk mitigation. As it goes, if a potential government fine, or a lawsuit payout is less than sum total of the the boon to the company, for continuing to bilk the marketplace... than there's no reason for the company to proactively fix any of their practices, even when those practices imperil consumers. This is how capitalism works, take it or leave it.

Perhaps this particular IT guy should have become a whistleblower... and put his entire career, resident status, and relationship at risk? Put youself in his shoes.

Just for the sake of discussion, How many of the corporate executives, responsible for all of these recent massive data breaches, that have impacted millions of consumers... have the banks kicked off of the rolls? I'm guessing not many. But, the little ole' IT guy from India gets singled out, for not single-handedly healing the world, on his modest salary. This adverse action, from a totally unrelated party to the settlement, is flat out poppycock, and an utter abuse of privacy.

This obviously has nothing to do with anyone's actual reputation, nor anyone's ability to pay. It is much bigger than this guy, and this overreaction nonsense from banks that want to play big-brother - needs to stop.