Citizens Bank returning $14M to customers, fined $20.5M, in deal with US on shorted deposits

Citizens Bank is returning $14 million to individual and business customers in an agreement with federal regulators for failing to credit customers the full amounts of their deposits.

The bank also was fined a total $20.5 million by three federal agencies. Altogether, customers with hundreds of thousands of checking accounts were shorted millions of dollars over six years starting in 2008, the regulators said Wednesday. The action was brought by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Treasury Department's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

Citizens Bank pocketed the difference in cases where the totals marked on deposit slips didn't match the actual money deposited, or when the bank's scanners misread deposit slips or checks, the regulators said.

Citizens, among the 20 largest U.S. banks, is based in Providence, Rhode Island.