BPI tells Senate: Claim of ‘billionaires’ fake

Executive Vice President Ramon Jocson, of the BPI Enterprise Services Group, explains before the Senate committees how the glitch occurred at BPI due to one of their (IT) employee’s misjudgment. BPI immediately stated that it was “100 percent not a hacking incident.” The Senate committee on banks, financial institutions and currencies and the Senate Committee on Finance jointly hold an inquiry into BPI and BDO’s electronic banking glitches. (Inquirer/Lyn Rillon)

“Doctored and fake,” was how an official of the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) described on Wednesday the documents that supposedly showed some of its clients had been credited as much as P12 billion when a computer glitch recently hit its financial system.

On June 7, the BPI reported an “internal data processing error” that resulted in discrepancies in account balances of some of its clients. A client claimed her money ballooned to more than P12.4 billion after the glitch.

READ: Woman finds P12.4B in BPI check account

But BPI Executive Vice President Ramon Jocson said such claim was “impossible,” saying a client must have a P200 million deposit a day to have at least P1 billion in an account for five days.

“Ang cash acceptance machines naming (In our cash acceptance machines), the highest bill you can feed is P1,000. You feed it every two seconds, so theoretically in one minute, you can feed around P30,000 times 60 minutes. In one hour, P1.8 million. So in order for you to do P200 million a day, you will have to do it across five machines walang tigil (nonstop) for 24 hours. Feed ka lang nang feed ng (You have to continuously feed it) P1,000,” Jocson said during the hearing of the Senate committee on banks, financial institutions and currencies, joint with the committee on finance.

What made the claims “quite impossible,” he said, was because their cash acceptance machines could only take as much as P4 million.

“So at P4 million sasabihin lipat ka na, puno na (you will be prompted that it’s already full, so you have to transfer). So categorically, I can state, your honor, yung mga nag post ng (that those who posted) P12 billion, P8 billion, P1 billion— they are all false. The documents they presented to the public and to the TV stations and radio stations were all doctored and fake, your honor,” Jocson said.

Out of the 1.5 million clients affected by the computer glitch, he said, the average debit was only around P7,700 while the average credit was P 7,200.

Jocson said the June 7 incident had prompted the BPI to install an automatic circuit breaker that would stop transactions when it reach more than P1 million, and impose other measures that would protect its clients. IDL