Sep 10, 2008 6:10 pm US/Eastern
Countrywide Informs Customers Of Data Breach
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
Mortgage giant
Countrywide Financial informed as many as 2 million customers their personal data, including social security numbers, may have been stolen. The data was allegedly stolen from the mortgage company's computer system.
The information was being sold to mortgage brokers as sales leads. The breach was one of the largest data theft cases in years, federal authorities said.
Victims of ID theft say not to take this lightly. "I'd be very concerned, I've had identity theft issues in the past. I've had my personal information compromised, so I'd be worried," consumer Mike Ruben said. "On a scale of one through ten, (this) is a ten."
A former Countrywide employee, Rene Rebollo of Pasadena, California, was arrested August 1 and charged with illegally accessing the firm's computers for more than two years. Rebollo has pleaded not guilty to the charges. Authorities also arrested Wahid Siddiqi on a fraud charge for trying to sell Countrywide data to federal authorities.
The letters Countrywide mailed to at-risk customers offered two years of free credit monitoring based upon the files kept by
Experian,
Equifax, and
TransUnion. The monitoring includes e-mail alerts of any major changes in a customer's credit report.
As of September 10, no customer in the list has reported any financial problems due to the data theft.
In a separate crime, The Bank of New York-Mellon reported more than 12 million customers may have had their personal data compromised. A total of 6 data tapes vanished from the bank.
Florida attorney general Bill McCollum said in a
press release as many as 700,000 Florida residents could be effected by the two data breaches at the different banks.
Customers of Bank of New York-Mellon can call 1-877-289-0136, or visit the company's website which details the
tape theft, and a site detailing
share owner services.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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