Well, it appears that the federal captive regulator known as the OCC (our historical page OCCWatch) was asleep at the switch again, as it apparently let Citibank steal from its credit card customers for over a dozen years, with the theft continuing even after a whistleblower informed higher-ups. Fortunately,

California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. today announced that he has reached a settlement with Citibank after a three-year investigation into the company’s use of an illegal “account sweeping” program. Nationally, the company took more than $14 million from its customers, including $1.6 million from California residents, through the use of a computer program that wrongfully swept positive account balances from credit-card customer accounts into Citibank’s general fund. “The company knowingly stole from its customers, mostly poor people and the recently deceased, when it designed and implemented the sweeps,” Attorney General Brown said. “When a whistleblower uncovered the scam and brought it to his superiors, they buried the information and continued the illegal practice.”