Citigroup denies breach report

Calls issue with customer an “isolated incident of fraud.”

Citigroup says a report that a Russian cyber gang broke into its computer systems and stole millions of dollars is false.

On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the FBI was investigating a breach at Citigroup’s Citibank subsidiary. The reported attack was linked to the Russian Business Network cyber gang.

But in a statement emailed to SearchFinancialSecurity.com, the company said the alleged breach and associated losses are false.

“Denial of service attacks are directed against companies around the world. While there have been attempts to interfere with the availability of our systems, none of these have resulted in any breaches, compromise of customer information, or losses to Citi,” the company said.

“We had no breach of the system and there were no losses, no customer losses, no bank losses,” Joe Petro, managing director of Citigroup’s Security and Investigative services, said in the statement. “Any allegation that the FBI is working a case at Citigroup involving tens of millions of losses is just not true.”

The company added that an incident mentioned in the WSJ report involving a Citibank customer who said his online bank account was breached was an “isolated incident of fraud.”