April Fools Sees Fake Extra Millions For Users of Brokerage Site

Upstart online brokerage site Zecco had an unfortunate April Fool's day snafu that they are claiming was an honest mistake. Users logged on to find larger balances than they should have, sometimes millions of dollars extra, and many of those users started trading with the nonexistent money. Happy April Fool's Day. "... when Zecco realized it, the company apparently started to force sell, even at a loss, charging the losses to the customers along with a '$19.99 broker-assisted trading fee.' Oops."

Comments

Re:Joke's on them

[johnsonav]

It's from the Roman numeral for thousand: M. MM is a thousand thousand, or a million.

Re:What language should we use for our site? Perl

[EvanED]

If you had bothered to read the summary, this was an intentional April Fools joke that went wrong. It has nothing to do with Perl and any lack of strict typing in the language.

Are you illiterate? From the summary: Upstart online brokerage site Zecco had an unfortunate April Fool's day snafu that they are claiming was an honest mistake (emphasis mine).

From the linked "article": Consumerist has updated their post with a message from Zecco claiming that it was not an April Fool's joke,...

And from the "real" article that is linked from there: Online brokerage site Zecco accidentally increased 1% of their customers' Buying Power balances by millions on April 1st, leading some customers to wonder whether it was a system glitch or some horrible April Fool's joke. It turned out to be the former.

And from Zecco itself: "Additionally, we want to make it clear that contrary to some reports, this was not in any way intentional and was not an April Fool's joke. We take the integrity of our customers' accounts very seriously and we have taken measures to ensure this does not happen again."

Whether or not you believe Zecco is a different matter, but the only thing pointing towards it being an April Fool's joke is speculation, and this is flatly contradicted by the claims of Zecco, and the summary somewhat accurately conveys this.

Re:What about those who were ahead on trades?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's TFPR:

Except in a very small number of egregious and fraudulent cases, customers will not be responsible for losses (or gains) incurred for trades in excess of their buying power.

I see the problem

[Un pobre guey]

• You are a Zecco customer with $20,000 in your account
• One day you log in and see that you now have $1,020,000 in your account
• Your heart is filled with bliss
• You start making trades with your new-found fortune
• Zecco discovers the error and reverts the trades at your expense
• You are angry and feel cheated
• You are a complete and utter dipshit

Re:What about those who were ahead on trades?

[Intron]

for those keeping track, its:
- slashdot links to
- techdirt links to
- consumerist links to
- mymoneyblog links to
- zecco forums