Zecco Accidentally Increasing Some Customers' Buying Power Was Not Intentional April Fool's Joke

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On April 1, 2009, one of our vendors provided Zecco Trading with an incorrect data feed which caused some customers to see erroneously high buying power. This error was quickly corrected, but about 1% of our customers were impacted.

Yesterday we reported that online brokerage Zecco had accidentally increased the buying power of some of some of its customers accounts on April 1st in an apparent April Fool’s prank. However, the company says on their blog that it was no joke:

On April 1, 2009, one of our vendors provided Zecco Trading with an incorrect data feed which caused some customers to see erroneously high buying power. This error was quickly corrected, but about 1% of our customers were impacted.

Furthermore,

All positions in excess of our customers’ true buying power have since been closed. 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.

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. We sincerely apologize to our customers if this caused any confusion.

Setting The Record Straight For April 1 [Zecco]

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