The CFPB, FDIC and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency have ordered Citizens Bank, N.A., Citizens Financial Group, Inc. and Citizens Bank of Pennsylvania to pay tens of millions of dollars in restitution and penalties for pocketing money from customers whose deposit slip totals didn't match the amounts deposited by the institution. The move marks the first action the CFPB has ever taken in regard to deposit processing practices.

Between Jan. 1, 2008, and Nov. 30, 2013, when the bank's scanners misread either deposit slips or deposited checks, or if the totals on deposit slips did not equal the actual deposit totals, Citizens Bank did not take action to fix the mistake if it fell below a certain dollar amount, the CFPB said in a statement. In some cases, when the total on the deposit slip was lower than the actual deposit amount, the bank credited the customer for the lower amount and kept the difference.

"In other words, if the bank read the customer's deposit slip as totaling $100, but the customer had actually deposited $150, the bank took the $50 difference for itself without ever informing the customer about what it had done," CFPB Director Richard Cordray said in a statement. The bank shorted customers millions of dollars over the years this way, he added.