A company owned by a major financial backer for former President Barack Obama has been ordered to pay a $13 million fine after it "betrayed the trust of tens of thousands of consumers," according to a New York Post report.
Russell Simmons, who has contributed thousands of dollars to Obama and other Democrats such as Hillary Clinton, was hit with the large fine because of failures at UniRush, a pre-paid credit card company he co-founded that caused financial havoc in 2015 when tens of thousands of users were unable to access their money for days.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which issued the fine, said that UniCard "betrayed the trust of tens of thousands of consumers who rely on the RushCard to conduct and manage their day-to-day finances."
Simmons' company markets itself to people who aren't able to obtain checking accounts, and many of them used the service to receive direct deposits that were essential for everyday purchases. Users were unable to access their accounts, make or receive payments, or check their balances for a period of ten days.
Simmons has said that the outage was "one of the most challenging periods in my professional career."
The company had already settled a class action lawsuit with users, paying out $19 million to about 300,000 customers. $10 million of the newly announced fine will also go to customers that were affected.
Simmons made news during the election by stating that President Donald Trump, formerly a close friend of the hip hop mogul, is the "epitome" of white supremacy.
Simmons also spoke out against Obama during his final year in the White House, stating that "Obama let us down."
"When I think about President Obama drinking that lead shit in flint Michigan it breaks my heart our government ain't shit Obama let us down," Simmons wrote in a Tweet.
Simmons has compared the use of horse-drawn carriages in New York City to the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis.