(Reuters) – Citigroup’s lawyers have urged U.S. District Judge Paul Oetken to dismiss a suit filed in January by Attorney General Letitia James, which accuses its Citibank unit of failing to reimburse customers who fall victim to online scammers, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday.
The lawyers said the bank has robust and extensive procedures to protect consumers from being scammed into making fraudulent transfers, the report added.
James, New York state’s attorney general, sued Citibank unit in January, alleging that its lax security protocols allowed scammers to gain easy access to users’ accounts and steal their deposits through unauthorized wire transfers.
She stated that “Citi’s negligence” had cost customers in the state millions of dollars.
The Bloomberg report added that Citi said U.S. banks will have to make a “dramatic shift” in how electronic payments are processed if New York state wins the lawsuit.
Citi urged a federal judge in April to dismiss the lawsuit, saying that the proper standard from the Uniform Commercial Code, which all U.S. states use, excuses banks from covering losses if in good faith they adopt commercially reasonable security measures to verify customer identities.
Citigroup and James’ office did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
(Reporting by Jaiveer Singh Shekhawat in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)
