Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum joined 50 attorneys general in announcing a $20 million settlement with payment processor ACI Worldwide. Oregon will receive approximately $200,000 from the settlement. The settlement resolves a 2021 testing error that led to processing $2.3 billion in unauthorized mortgage payments.

Nationstar Mortgage, known publicly as Mr. Cooper, offered ACI’s Speedpay product to its customers so they could schedule and electronically pay their monthly mortgage payments through the Automated Clearing House system. A test of their system led to unauthorized withdrawals from the accounts of hundreds of thousands of mortgage-holders. The error affected 4,888 consumer accounts in Oregon.

“Our investigation showed that significant defects in ACI’s privacy and data security procedures and technical infrastructure related to the Speedpay platform were responsible for this devastating incident. ACI must do better by putting a higher value on their customers’ data privacy,” said AG Rosenblum.

All affected consumers have been or will be fully restored through other means. Oregonians affected by ACI’s testing error may also wish to submit claim forms in connection with a class-action settlement and must do so by November 13, 2023. More information on the class action settlement is available at https://achloanpaymentlitigation.com/.

While ACI took corrective steps to minimize the impact of the testing error, in some cases consumers were not able to access the money at issue and were forced to incur overdraft or insufficient funds fees. In addition to the financial settlement with the states and territories, today’s settlement requires ACI to take steps to avoid any future incidents, including requiring ACI to use artificially created data rather than real consumer data when testing systems or software; and requiring ACI to segregate any testing or development work from its consumer payment systems.