New Jersey Lawyers File Identity Theft Class Action Against Bank of America

06/04/2005

(ContentDesk) June 4, 2005 -- The New Jersey law firms of Pellettieri, Rabstein & Altman and Lynch Keefe Bartels filed a complaint against Bank of America on Wednesday June 1, 2005 in New Jersey Superior Court, Law Division, Mercer County (Jones v. Bank of America; Docket Number not yet available) on behalf of Trenton resident Cindy Jones. The attorneys announced their intention to seek class action status to represent other identity theft victims as well against financial services giant Bank of America for damages resulting from the theft of tens of thousands of customer information files.Pellettieri, Rabstein & Altman, with offices in Princeton, Mount Holly and Nutley NJ, and Lynch Keefe Bartels, with offices in Shrewsbury, New Jersey will serve as co-counsel in this matter and seek class action status by the Court.Ms. Jones, a customer of Bank of America, was informed that her personal financial information, including her Social Security number, were found in the possession of individuals arrested by Hackensack, New Jersey police in the growing scandal. Of immediate concern to her attorneys, are potential unauthorized use of Ms.

Jones' identity between the times of the theft and the arrests, the need (and cost) to carefully monitor Ms. Jones' credit reports for unauthorized activity during the next several years, and the availability of Ms. Jones' identity for her own use.Hackensack, New Jersey police announced that more than 676,000 customers were affected when bank employees illegally sold information on more than 1 million accounts from 4 financial services companies: Bank of America, Wachovia, PNC and Commerce Bank. Police first announced arrests of 9 people, including 7 current and former bank employees, on Monday, May 23, 2005. "Bank of America reported alerting about 60,000 customers who were included on computer disks discovered by police, bank spokeswoman Alex Liftman said Monday," reported the Associated Press ("Banks Notify Customers of Data Theft" by Paul Nowell, May 23, 2005.CNN/Money reported: "As this gets going, these numbers are going to go up and up, Hackensack Detective Captain Frank Lomia told CNN, adding that more arrests may be coming in the case.

… The data-theft may have been the biggest ever in banking, the Hackensack NJ police department said in a statement citing an unnamed Treasury Department official." ("Bank Security Breach May Be Biggest Yet", CNN/Money, May 23, 2005)Reports of lax handling and rampant selling of confidential and personal customer financial information increasingly blankets the press. Epidemic demand for stolen identities appears to have been met by easy availability.According to a news story carried by several New Jersey newspapers, "Protecting Your Privacy" by Ellen Simon of the Associated Press (May 24, 2005) highlighted examples of problems confronting and solutions available financial services companies, based on interviews computer security professionals who spoke of relatively inexpensive prevention steps, such as: Monitored internal audit trails, restricting data access, limiting data collection, basic encryption, secure shipping, and simple background checks. The experts also raised corporate management hurdles security measure confront, like low priority and cost-benefit perceptions."Bank of America has a fiduciary responsibility to protect clients' confidential personal and account information and could have taken some reasonable steps to prevent these thefts," explains Arthur Penn, Esq., a partner and mass torts and class action litigation attorney at the New Jersey law firm of Pellettieri, Rabstein & Altman. "Bank of America is in a business based on trust, and they violated that trust. So this lawsuit seeks to hold them accountable.""This is more than a story about the massive theft of customers' personal financial data," says John Keefe, Jr., Esq., a partner and New Jersey mass torts and class action litigation attorney at Lynch Keefe Bartels.

"This is also a story about the massive failure of the bank, or banks, to take reasonable actions to protect their customers' personal financial information from identity theft..