Earlier this month, a former senior financial analyst Countrywide was arrested for stealing and selling Social Security numbers and other sensitive personal information up to 2 million mortgage applicants over a two year period. Rene L. Rebollo Jr. worked at Full Spectrum Lending, subprime loans Countywide division. According to the FBI, Robollo confessed to copy restricted information for approximately 20,000 customers both from an unsecured Sunday night desktop. It would then sell large batches of stolen data for $ 400 or $ 500 each, making each customer profile worth about 2.5 cents. Most data have been sold to people in the mortgage industry which could then use it to make pitches. The authorities do not know if any of the information had been used for outright fraud, such as identity theft.
The authorities say this is one of the biggest security breaches over the years.
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