Fergie's Tech Blog

FBI: Flash Drive Used to Steal Countrywide Customer Data

Nancy Gohring writes on ComputerWorld:

Struggling home mortgage lender Countrywide, already hit hard by the lending crisis and an investigation into potential fraud at the company, now faces another crisis: One of its former employees has been charged for allegedly stealing personal information about customers.

Rene Rebollo was arrested on Friday by agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in California, who say he stole and then sold personal information about Countrywide customers throughout the country over a two-year period.

Rebollo worked as a senior financial analyst for Countrywide Home Loan's subprime mortgage division, where he had access to Countrywide databases containing customer data, according to the complaint against him. Using his computer at work, he saved the customer data onto his own flash drives to remove it from the office, the FBI alleges. About a month ago, during an interview by FBI agents, Rebollo admitted he gave out the account information to third parties, according to the complaint.

Rebollo lost his job with Countrywide in July.

Another man, Wahid Siddiqi, was arrested for allegedly buying the stolen data and also selling it.

posted by Fergie @ 8/01/2008 05:54:00 PM