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Citibank hates Armenians?

Published on 27 Comments on Citibank hates Armenians?

Via Atrios, I see that Citibank has been fined for discriminating against.......Armenians:

Citi treated Armenian Americans as criminals who were likely to commit fraud. From at least 2015 through 2021, Citi targeted retail services credit card applicants with surnames that Citi employees associated with Armenian national origin as well as applicants in or around Glendale, California. The bank specifically targeted surnames ending in “-ian” and “-yan.” Nicknamed “Little Armenia,” Glendale is home to approximately 15% of the Armenian American population in the U.S.

The fuck? This sounds like something you'd expect from the mob, not the third biggest retail bank in the country. I'd really love to know the background behind this.

27 thoughts on “Citibank hates Armenians?”

  1. simplicio

    Apparently there was an Armenian organized crime ring in S CA that was running a bunch of credit card scams, and Citi decided it was easier to just crack down on anyone with an Armenian last name then try and filter out the actual criminals.

    1. kennethalmquist

      If CitiBank's statement is to be believed, top management did not set this policy. I suspect that what Citi did at the top level is to set up incentives for lower level people to prevent credit card applicants from scamming Citi. People in the group responsible for credit card approvals concluded they could do this more effectively if, in addition to the normal checks they applied to all credit card applicants, they also took special actions on applications that appeared to be from Armenians--either denying the applications outright or flagging the accounts for special scrutiny.

      Rohit Chopra noted in her press conference that this isnt't the first time that Citi has broken consumer protection laws, citing other fines in 2015, 2016, and 2018. It seems that Citi's management effectively communicates to employees that employees should be trying to increase corporate profits, but doesn't communicate--at least not effectively--that efforts to increase corporate profits should be confined to legal means.

      1. Altoid

        This does sound right. And is an echo of that scam several years ago where a big West Coast bank was opening up new charge-bearing accounts for current customers without bothering to tell the customers. Welles Fargo, or B of A? Similar pattern-- incentives and imperatives that encourage people to cheat and/or break the law to either climb the ladder or just keep their jobs.

        BTW, does Deutsche Bank issue credit cards? I hear they don't mind doing business with scammers

      2. rrhersh

        I generally assume that when the top people in an organization deny knowledge of their subordinates illegal' actions performed for the benefit of the organization, this is at best willful ignorance. If we accept the top people to be genuine innocents, we must next ask why these confessed incompetents are still in charge.

      3. Batchman

        It says something about the world we live in when a company can be zinged for not "communicat[ing] ... that efforts ... should be confined to legal means." Do people really need to be explicitly told not to do illegal stuff?

        1. Altoid

          It does say something but yeah, I'd have to think so. Incentives and institutional cultures that put results ahead of anything else can put a lot of strain on people's ethics, and how many corporate mission or values statements include anything about observing or respecting or valuing the law? I haven't surveyed them but I'd be surprised if it's a few in a hundred.

          These kinds of situations always remind me of the Milgram shock experiment. Even conflicted subjects went right on shocking away and overall half were willing to give what they were told would be a fatal dose. Assurance from the authority figure was the key. Now transfer that to a job situation with all the external financial and personal pressures and internal incentives and pressures.

          Also, I'd bet the bright idea here came up at too low a level to get an explicit legal review. That seems like another management lapse, but maybe deliberate. Over the decade before I retired my university essentially turned everything over to Risk Management, whose job was to say no to everything. If Citi has something like that, I have to think there's tremendous pressure to make operational decisions at the level one step below where RM would get involved.

          Obama is supposed to have told his assembled staff at the start of his administration, "don't do stupid shit." He probably didn't have to, but it also probably wasn't a bad idea to have that echoing in people's heads the rest of his terms.

    2. erick

      I’m not an Armenian organized crime lord, but I think if I were and I was going to run a big fake credit card scam ring the first thing I would do is not use Armenian sounding names for the cards.

  3. Dr Brando

    I wonder how much their losses for fraud were for this customer cohort leading up to enacting this policy because they had to have been getting SLAMMED to put something like this in place.

  6. different_name

    There was an Armenia mob in the region iirc.

    There's a white mob where I live. Is Citi going to stop extending credit to white people?

    2. rick_jones

      Depends, I suppose. What name would she have used when applying?

      The bank specifically targeted surnames ending in “-ian” and “-yan.”

      She use her birth name of Cherilyn Sarkasian? Cher Bono? Cher Allman? Just Cher?

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