Sep 14, 2008 11:28 pm US/Central
Mortgage Company Employee May Have Sold Names
(WCCO)
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The letter is informing customers that a former Countrywide employee may have sold their personal information to a third party. That information included names, addresses, social security numbers and other mortgage information.
AP
Families across the country are receiving letters saying someone from their mortgage company may have sold their personal information.
Last Thursday Rob Rodine received a letter that he said pretty much ruined his day. The letter was from Countrywide Home Loan, and it let Rodine know there was a chance some of his personal information may be in the wrong hands.
"You hear horror stories about that all the time, people getting their identity stolen. The amount of time and effort it has to take to get it cleared is something I don't want to deal with," said Rodine.
Rodine and his family aren't alone. More than a million Countrywide customers have received the same letter.
The letter is informing customers that a former Countrywide employee may have sold their personal information to a third party. That information included names, addresses, social security numbers and other mortgage information.
"They can do anything they want with it and that's something we don't need to happen," Rodine said.
The former employee has been identified as 36-year-old Rene Rebollo. Before being fired in July, he was a senior financial analyst with Countrywide.
Rebollo and another man not affiliated with the company, 25-year-old Wahid Siddiqi, were arrested in August and are now part of an on-going FBI investigation. They are accused of selling customer files in batches of 20,000 at $500 per batch. That came out to about 2.5 cents per customer file.
Countrywide released a statement saying that so far they have no evidence to indicate any customer has been a victim of identity theft or fraud. They are also offering free credit monitoring for two years to any customer who received the letter.
But the Rodines said that isn't enough. Angie Rodine agreed with her husband that the company should be held liable.
"Whose to say someone wouldn't hold on to our information for more than two years and what happens to us after that fact?" she said.
On Aug. 25, Rebollo pleaded not guilty to illegally accessing the company's computers and selling customer files. He is accused of selling the information over the course of two years.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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