Federal regulators yesterday slapped JPMorgan Chase with $389 million in penalties for deceiving millions of customers into buying costly and unneeded services when they signed up for credit cards, the Washington Post reported today. The nation’s largest bank will pay $309 million to reimburse about 2.1 million consumers who were duped into paying for credit monitoring and other add-ons between October 2005 and June 2012. Those consumers enrolled in and paid for identity theft protection products but did not receive the full benefit of the products, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The bank regulator hit JPMorgan with an additional $60 million civil penalty based, in part, on the scope and duration of the violations. The OCC also is requiring the bank to take a number of corrective measures, including developing a better risk-management program for consumer products marketed or sold by JPMorgan or its vendors.
