A former employee at a subsidiary of Fidelity National Information Services Inc. allegedly stole 2.3 million consumer records with bank account and credit card information and sold them to a data broker.
Some of the records, which were kept by Certegy Check Services Inc. in St. Petersburg, Fla., were then sold to direct marketing companies who used them in telephone and mail campaigns.
Certegy said there’s no evidence that bank account or credit card information has been used for identity theft or fraudulent financial activity. The employee accused of stealing the information, a senior-level database administrator entrusted with defining and enforcing data-access rights, was fired and the company “is encouraging immediate prosecution.”
The U.S. Secret Service determined that the unnamed Certegy employee was the owner and operator of the data broker that sold the stolen data to direct marketers.
The theft did not involve any “outside intrusion into, or compromise of, Certegy’s technology systems,” the company said in a press release. Certegy is talking legal action to retrieve the data and stop it from being used for marketing, the company said.
The stolen data included names, addresses and telephone numbers, and in many cases dates of birth, and bank account or credit card information. About 2.3 million records were believed stolen, with roughly 2.2 million containing bank account information and 99,000 containing credit card information.
Certegy said it has filed a civil complaint against the former employee and the marketing companies thought to have received the stolen data, notified Visa and MasterCard of the incident, and alerted the nation’s three major credit reporting agencies — TransUnion, Equifax and Experian.
The company said it would notify all affected consumers and establish a toll-free hotline to answer consumer questions, and that it has implemented a fraud watch for those affected checking accounts.
Fidelity National Information Services does business with 35 of the top 50 global banks, including nine of the top 10, and provides outsourcing services to financial institutions, retailers, mortgage lenders and real estate professionals. The company provides credit card issuer and transaction processing services, mortgage loan processing and mortgage-related information products, and data processing for financial institutions.
Its subsidiary, Certegy, maintains bank account information as part of a check authorization service that helps merchants validate checks. Certegy also maintains check and credit card information as part of a service it provides to more than 200 casinos to provide gamblers access to funds.
