Bank One has cooked up a revolting theft of small publishers, seizing millions from the account of a distributor (which has never missed a loan-payment) that are owed to publishing companies that don’t even have accounts with the bank:

Common Courage and the 85 publishers use LPC Group as a distributor for their books. LPC had a loan from the bank, with about $2.7 million outstanding. No publisher had signed onto the loan. Most if not all were unaware that LPC had obtained it. The bank acknowledges that LPC was not behind in loan payments. It recalled the loan after deciding LPC was a bad credit risk, essentially asking publishers to pony up for its own bad business choices.

As with every month, on April 1, LPC deposited a $1.2 million payment it received from an independent warehouse for sales of the publishers’ books. Bank One, from documents in its possession, knew at the time that the payment was created from the sale of books owned by the publishers that were with LPC on consignment. It also knew that $1 million of the deposit was due to be sent out to publishers. Nonetheless, it seized the money the day it arrived in LPC’s account.

Bank One, still owed $1.4 million, wants money from the next sales as well

Link Discuss (via This Modern World)