Georgia Attorney General Chriss Carr announced a multimillion-dollar settlement with a company over unauthorized withdrawals from mortgage-holders in 2021 would net the state more than $500,000.
According to the Attorney General’s office, ACI Worldwide, a payment processor, had a testing error in 2021 that attempted to withdraw $2.3 billion from the accounts of mortgage holders.
The error impacted nearly 20,000 Georgian’s financial stability, according to Carr.
The legal action of Carr and 49 other attorneys general has ended in a $10 million settlement with ACI worldwide. Georgia will receive just over $550,000 from the agreement, according to the AG’s office.
The money Georgia will receive from the settlement is split between a $334,300 payment and an extra $216,136 in a second portion from an additional $10 million fee, according to the AG’s office.
“ACI’s testing error impacted the financial stability of nearly 20,000 hardworking Georgians,” Carr said in a statement. “This settlement helps to ensure appropriate safeguards are in place to protect consumer data and prevent this type of mistake from ever happening again.”
Carr’s office said ACI’s erroneous withdrawal from mortgage payment accounts had impacted 1.4 million transactions, for a total of $2.3 billion.
While the more than 1 million people impacted led to a large error, Carr’s office said the issue could have been much larger.
According to the statement from Carr’s office, the error occurred on April 23, 2021, while ACI was testing its platform.
The company accidentally submitted live Nationstar Mortgage, publicly known as Mr. Cooper, consumer data into their system, causing the company to erroneously withdraw payments from hundreds of thousands of customers, on a day that was not expected or authorized for collection.
As a result, the AG’s office said 1.4 million transactions were processed, leading to the $2.3 billion error, though “the vast majority of withdrawals did not ultimately go through or were reversed.”
477,000 Mr. Cooper customers were impacted, but in some cases, consumers were unable to access the money and incurred overdraft or insufficient funds fees, according to Carr’s office.
The impacted customers have received restitution from ACI through other related settlements, the AG’s office said.
As part of the settlement, ACI will have to pay $20 million to the states as well as take new steps to prevent future incidents from occurring, such as using false customer data when practicing system tests to preserve consumer privacy.
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