United Statesa Fed. Sav. Bank v. PLS Fin. Servs., Inc.

340 F. Supp. 3d 721
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Illinois
DecidedOctober 23, 2018
DocketNo. 16 C 7911
StatusPublished
Cited by12 cases

This text of 340 F. Supp. 3d 721 (United Statesa Fed. Sav. Bank v. PLS Fin. Servs., Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Illinois primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United Statesa Fed. Sav. Bank v. PLS Fin. Servs., Inc., 340 F. Supp. 3d 721 (illinoised 2018).

Opinion

SARA L. ELLIS, United States District Judge

After Plaintiff USAA Federal Savings Bank ("USAA") lost over $7,000,000 in a fraudulent check cashing scheme, USAA filed suit against Defendants PLS Financial Services, Inc., PLS Group, Inc., The Payday Loan Store of Illinois, Inc.1 (collectively, *723"PLS"), and PLS Check Cashers of Illinois ("PLS Check"). In its third amended complaint, USAA claims that PLS acted negligently in protecting USAA members' financial information so as to allow third parties to create fraudulent checks with that information and that PLS violated the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act ("ICFA"), 815 Ill. Comp. Stat. 505/1 et seq. PLS moves for judgment on the pleadings with respect to USAA's negligence claim.2 Because the statute, regulations, and stipulated final judgment on which USAA relies do not provide a basis to state a negligence claim, the Court dismisses USAA's negligence claim.

BACKGROUND3

USAA provides banking services to members and veterans of the United States military. PLS, through the four individually named Defendants, provides check cashing and payday lending services at approximately 300 retail locations in eleven states, including Illinois. The individual Defendants share common directors, officers, and office locations, with centralized recordkeeping and computer systems, and have similar business practices. PLS is not a bank and does not provide bank accounts to its customers. Instead, PLS charges customers a fee to cash checks, obtain money orders, and use other financial services.

As part of its business, PLS cashes checks drawn on USAA. In cashing these checks, as with any other checks, PLS obtains certain information about the drawer of the check and the bank on which the check is drawn from the face of the check, including the drawer's name, the check number, account number, bank routing number, drawer's signature, and MICR information.4 PLS makes an electronic copy of the check before forwarding the check to the drawer's bank for payment.

In October 2012, the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") and PLS agreed to settle a suit brought by the FTC against PLS in which the FTC alleged that PLS

*724did not properly secure its customers' personal information. The stipulated final judgment required PLS to develop a comprehensive information security program to protect the security, confidentiality, and integrity of consumers' personal information, including consumers' names, addresses, and financial institution account numbers. PLS also agreed to take reasonable measures to protect against unauthorized access to or use of such information. PLS thereafter adopted several internal policies, requiring unique user IDs and difficult-to-guess passwords that users must change every thirty days.

Problems with unauthorized access to PLS customers' personal information continued, however. Specifically, a group of individuals engaged in a check-cashing scheme, creating counterfeit checks using information obtained from PLS employees. The government has charged or indicted at least nine individuals for their involvement in this scheme. To facilitate the scheme, PLS employees provided third parties with access to PLS' computer systems, allowing these third parties to copy check images and produce counterfeit checks based off those images. The checks ranged from between $5 and $10,000. The third parties then used these counterfeit checks, which included checks drawn on USAA, to obtain money through various schemes. PLS employees involved in the scheme took a portion of the illegally obtained funds when they were withdrawn through PLS. The payor banks on the counterfeit checks, including USAA, ultimately bore the loss because the checks were unauthorized, meaning the members on whose accounts the checks were drawn could not be held liable for them. USAA has discovered over 2,000 original checks from its members that members cashed at PLS and schemers subsequently counterfeited, causing USAA to incur $7,865,518.31 in damages associated with the payment of the forged checks.

In October 2014, USAA notified PLS of the counterfeiting and requested help in coordinating an investigation into the issue. Another bank in New York also notified PLS of a similar scheme in December 2014. PLS then began investigating the issue, learning that an individual accessed Digicheck, PLS' database of check images, from within PLS to obtain the information needed to create counterfeit checks. In February 2015, PLS found internal weaknesses related to application controls and memorialized these findings in an April 2015 memorandum. In addition to this investigation, PLS also undertook an audit in 2015, which revealed that PLS was not following its access control policies. Despite discovering these weaknesses, however, PLS did not act and instead allowed the fraudulent check scheme to continue. And while USAA implemented several rules to restrict fund availability in an attempt to respond to the check scheme, these efforts did not fully address the harm.

LEGAL STANDARD

A motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6) challenges the sufficiency of the complaint, not its merits. Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6) ; Gibson v. City of Chicago , 910 F.2d 1510, 1520 (7th Cir. 1990). In considering a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, the Court accepts as true all well-pleaded facts in the plaintiff's complaint and draws all reasonable inferences from those facts in the plaintiff's favor. AnchorBank, FSB v. Hofer , 649 F.3d 610, 614 (7th Cir. 2011). To survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion, the complaint must not only provide the defendant with fair notice of a claim's basis but must also be facially plausible. Ashcroft v. Iqbal , 556 U.S. 662, 678, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009) ; see also *725Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly , 550 U.S. 544, 555, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007).

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
340 F. Supp. 3d 721, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-statesa-fed-sav-bank-v-pls-fin-servs-inc-illinoised-2018.