| ChoicePoint had Similar Data Leak Years Ago |
ChoicePoint had Similar Data Leak Years Ago - Paper
3:21 AM ET March 2, 2005
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Scammers penetrated ChoicePoint Inc.'s (CPS) vast online database of personal records five years ago in an operation similar to a more recent case that has triggered a national furor over privacy, court records show, The Los Angeles Times reported in its Wednesday editions.
Two Nigerian-born fraud artists were arrested in Los Angeles in 2002 by federal officials who charged that the pair used ChoicePoint to gain access to confidential information about at least 7,000 people and possibly many more, resulting in at least $1 million in losses, the paper reported.
That security breach, which received no public attention at the time, is similar to the case in which a North Hollywood man, also a Nigerian native, pleaded no contest last month to felony identity theft. He had obtained as many as 145,000 ChoicePoint records by setting up a fake business claiming to have a legitimate need for the information.
The most recent incident came to light because of a new California law that requires credit agencies to notify victims of identity theft.
ChoicePoint executives on Tuesday declined to comment, the Times reported. |