Data Breach Alert: Countrywide financial analyst stole data

Posted by Caitlin on August 20th, 2008

Early this month, a former Countrywide senior financial analyst was arrested for stealing and selling Social Security numbers and other sensitive personal information for up to 2 million mortgage applicants over a two year period. Rene L. Rebollo Jr. was working at Full Spectrum Lending, Countywide's subprime lending division. According to the FBI, Robollo confessed to copying restricted information for about 20,000 customers at a time from an unsecured office computer on Sunday nights. He would then sell large batches of stolen data for $400 or $500 each, making each customer profile worth about 2.5 cents. Most of the data was sold to people in the mortgage industry who could then use it to make pitches. Authorities don't know whether any of the information had been used for outright fraud, such as identity theft.

Authorities say that this is one of the largest security breaches in years.

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