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Comment by grumple | Hacker News Reader

But the money they were paid with wasn’t Revlons... it was Citibank’s. This is theft from Citibank shareholders.

There's no theft, it is ineptitude at Citibank. The economic loss for ineptitude should rightly fall on Citibank's shareholders.

Should the economic loss of a fat finger be a billion dollars? Is that a just amount?

Perhaps one should have proper controls in place?

Lol, it's not an economic loss, it's money paid back. Its not that hard to understand.

If the money doesn't get paid back, THEN it would be an economic loss. For the hedge fund.

It’s not money paid back. Revlon literally didn’t have the money, it came out of Citibank’s account. Citibank doesn’t owe the hedge fund anything.

You suggest that ineptitude magically cancels out theft somehow. It's not clear that this is so. If I leave my wallet at your house by accident, its not your wallet.

Sure but if I lend you $1000 and then you leave your wallet at my house by accident with $1000 in it while going out drinking and overdrawing your checking account it’s not quite so clear cut is it.

I feel like this is more like if I lend you $1000, and you give your friend $100 to give to me.

Your friend typos the bank transfer and pays me $1000.

I don't think it's unreasonable for me to assume you're paying back the whole loan at that point. Maybe you've come to an arrangement with your friend, maybe you've paid them in cash, whatever, that's between you and your friend. As far as I'm concerned we've concluded our business.

I am not certain that this logic scales to 9 figures.

It is clear cut. You do not get to dictate the payment schedule beyond what is mutually agreed upon, or ends up being negotiated in a legal proceeding.

Being a creditor does not magically entitle you to the entire value of the loan from someone at your whim. Due process must be followed. That's risk.

Initiating or benefiting off of what amounts to a mistaken transaction by a proxy agency, which ultimately proves to be unauthorized is quite literally theft.

My goodness, I'm so glad I don't do business with most people given the responses I'm seeing in this thread. It seriously leads me to think that people need to spend some time internalizing what it means to be a responsible financial facilitator.

Hint: Exploiting clerical errors to perform margin calls isn't it. That's how you spook people out of doing good business, which makes the market that much riskier for everyone else. I hate finance, and even I grok that.

So when Experian negligently exposes their customer's data which gets stolen, it's not their fault? Punishing a company for ineptitude should be expected.

It is their fault, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't also prosecute the folks who use that data to open a bunch of fraudulent credit lines.

Yes but the "theft" in this case is Citibank's incompetence resulting in a decline of shareholder value. Brigade isn't stealing anything.

Imagine three friends. One owes money to another one, and a third acts as some kind of financially responsible intermediary. A owes money to B, and C is the intermediary.

A says to C "Hey pay back B" and even though A means "pay back the portion I owe this month" C "accidentally" pays the loan back to B in full.

Does B have to give the money back? If B refuses to give the money back to C, is B "stealing" fron C?

If anything, the matter has been simplified. Instead of a three-party contract, it becomes a two-party contract between A and C and B can merrily go on her way.

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