Customers upset after "unusual activity" within Tri Counties Bank system shuts down all ATMs, other services
SACRAMENTO -- Tri Counties Bank said unusual activity within its network shut down some of its operations for days.
As of 2021, the bank had over 75 branches in California and over 37,000 ATMs nationwide.
Bank representatives told CBS13 Monday an investigation is ongoing. They are working to determine the scope and if any data has been compromised.
The systems currently offline as of February 13 are all of the bank's ATMs, company email and phone lines, and the customer service call center.
The bank's debit and credit transactions are online, as well as mobile banking. All branches are open, though withdrawals are not possible at this time.
The bank is telling customers if they need to withdraw money, they need to go to an ATM outside of their network and try that.
Margarita Bushneff is one of them. She has been banking with Tri Counties for 15 years and says this is the first time she hasn't been able to find out how much money is currently in her account.
"They said, 'We can't do anything for you because it's a system-wide outage.' That's what they told me," said Bushneff.
In the past week, she said she's gone in person to her local Folsom branch twice with questions she then brought to CBS13; including, was the bank hacked?
"Their answer was, 'We don't know anything.' I asked them literally, 'Are you going under?' And they said, 'We don't know,' " said Bushneff.
CBS13 spoke with a representative of the bank Monday who would not confirm if the disturbance stems from an internal system failure or a cyber-attack. They referred us to the statement posted online for customers which describes "unusual activity in our network environment" that's shutting down several systems.
"I don't know that my money is in there. I don't know because they are keeping everything a secret," said Bushneff. "I'm afraid right now that it was hacked into and my money is gone. That's how I feel."
Tri Counties Bank's online statement assures its customers that, "Your bank accounts are housed on a secure system which is separate from the Tri Counties Bank network environment impacted by this event. There is no evidence that your accounts were impacted."
It also says it's investigating the impact to any data.
Tri Counties Bank is a member of the FDIC, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
According to a 2021 FDIC ruling, "Bank service providers must notify any affected FDIC-supervised banking organization customer as soon as possible when the bank service provider determines that it has experienced a computer-security incident that has materially disrupted or degraded, or is reasonably likely to materially disrupt or degrade, services provided to such banking organization for four or more hours."
Bushneff tells CBS13 she wants the bank to be more transparent about what has happened, and it has now lost her as a customer.
"Maybe by now after a week, maybe tell us what's really going on," she said.
CBS13 spoke with several other Tri Counties Bank customers Monday who did not want to go on camera. They reported having the same issues and concerns as Bushneff. One customer was unaware of the disturbance until our team brought it up to him; he's now concerned about the safety of his money and information.
A representative told CBS13 Monday there is no timeline for when its systems will be back online, but that they are working round the clock to get things back to normal. As of Tuesday, the bank says some ATMs are operational but the customer service call center is still down.
