. Robinhood Fined Record $70 Million — With $13 Million Paid to Users — for Service Outages, ‘Misleading’ Customers - News Times

Robinhood Fined Record $70 Million — With $13 Million Paid to Users — for Service Outages, ‘Misleading’ Customers

By News Here - 12:08

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) said Wednesday it had ordered Robinhood to pay $70 million as part of a settlement agreement related to service outages and claims the trading platform disseminated “false and misleading” information to its customers.

“FINRA considered the widespread and significant harm suffered by customers, including millions of customers who received false or misleading information from the firm, millions of customers affected by the firm’s systems outages in March 2020, and thousands of customers the firm approved to trade options even when it was not appropriate for the customers to do so,” the organization said in a statement.

FINRA said Robinhood agreed to pay $57 million as a fine, along with $7 million to customers who were confused or misled by the company’s information on margin trading. It specifically cited a 20-year-old trader who killed himself in June 2020 after the platform advised that he had a negative balance of $730,000 — and was unable to reach Robinhood’s customer service to resolve the issue.

“In a note found after his death, he expressed confusion as to how he could have used margin to purchase securities because, he believed, he had not ‘turned on’ margin in his account,” FINRA said. “Robinhood also displayed to this individual (and certain other customers) inaccurate negative cash balances.”

It said users had lost $7 million due to Robinhood’s “misstatements,” in addition to an undisclosed amount that was lost as a result of service outages arising due to technical issues from January 2018 through February 2021. The company is paying another $5 million in restitution to customers affected by the outages.

The settlement does not include the January ordeal that led the company to halt trading of stock in GameStop. Outrage over the incident led to a congressional hearing in February, where CEO Vlad Tenev told lawmakers that downtime was required for the company to meet certain regulatory requirements.

Watch above via CNBC.

The post Robinhood Fined Record $70 Million — With $13 Million Paid to Users — for Service Outages, ‘Misleading’ Customers first appeared on Mediaite.

from Mediaite https://ift.tt/3yd8zfd

  • Share:

You Might Also Like

0 comments