Countrywide employees stole ID info, says lawsuit

Employees with Countrywide Financial — infamous for its role in hawking the subprime mortgages that helped start the national financial crisis — stole and disseminated the personal and financial information of "perhaps millions" of Countrywide customers, a lawsuit filed in California alleges.

The class action lawsuit, filed last month in Ventura County, alleges that defendants do not dispute that customers’ private financial information was "disseminated," according to a report by Courthouse News Service. The lawsuit asks for information on “whether the dissemination was intended as a plan or scheme, or was intentional; (and) whether any of the defendants was simply aiding and abetting, rather than an architect of the plan to disseminate the personal information.”

The lawsuit complaint alleges that Countrywide learned that the financial information of potentially millions of customers had been stolen by certain Countrywide agents, or employees, and that those individuals then sold the personal information to “third party identity theft experts.”

Still, the complaint alleges, “Countrywide delayed several months before informing their customers.”

The complaint says some of the plaintiffs filing the lawsuit have had their credit histories “shattered” and that they have been unable to obtain loans or credit.

The lawsuit asks for $20 million in damages, along with further punitive damages.

Named as defendants in the lawsuit are Countrywide Financial and Bank of America Corporation, among others. Bank of America purchased Countrywide Financial in 2008. The lawsuit alleges the acts happened when Countrywide was a division of Bank of America.