A U.S. court on Friday ordered North Carolina's Four Oaks Bank to pay a penalty of $1.2 million over claims that it failed to protect consumers' bank accounts in a win for federal prosecutors investigating banks doing business with payday lenders, Reuters reported on Monday. The civil penalty was the result of a complaint filed in January in U.S. District Court in eastern North Carolina that said the bank had been "deliberately ignorant" when dealing with merchants who were defrauding customers. A settlement, including the payment, was proposed when the complaint was filed. The bank said in January that as part of the deal it did not admit to the allegations or to any liability. In their complaint, U.S. prosecutors alleged that Four Oaks Bank allowed a privately owned third-party payment processor in Texas to illegally process around $2.4 billion in return for more than $850,000 in fees.
