The largest bank data theft in USA affected about 700,000 customers at 4 different banks: Wachovia Corp., Bank of America Corp., Commerce Bancorp Inc. and PNC Bank NA.
9 people, including 7 former bank employees and 1 former manager of the New Jersey Department of Labor, were arrested. Police in Hackensack, N.J., are continuing their investigation into the theft by a crime ring that apparently accessed the data illegally through the former bank employees.
The police announced the arrests of the nine suspects on April 28 and charged them with illegally selling personal identification information stolen from bank and New Jersey state computer databases. The police investigation alleges that a company called DRL Associates Inc. was set up to find individuals and as a collection agency, but was not properly licensed for those activities by the state.
A Hackensack man, Orazio Lembo, 35, has been charged with one count of racketeering and eight counts of disclosing data from a database for his role in the crime ring. Police allege that Lembo used his home as an office for DRL Associates and that he had hired several upper level bank employees to access data, including names, account numbers and balances, from the banks.
The bank employees worked for Wachovia Corp., Bank of America Corp., Commerce Bancorp Inc. and PNC Bank NA. They pulled up the account data while working inside their banks, then printed out screen captures of the information or wrote it out by hand. One of the other suspects is a former manager of the New Jersey Department of Labor.
In addition to Lembo, the other suspects are:
Orlando Rivera, 42, of New Milford, N.J., a former manager at the New Jersey Department of Labor. Kelvin Diaz, 27, of Hackensack, a former Bank of America employee. Zoran Levajac, 35, of Totowa, N.J., a former Commerce Bank manager and former PNC Bank manager. Myron Frierson, 29, of Teaneck, N.J., a former financial specialist for Wachovia Bank. Maurice Williams II, 28, of Hackensack, a former financial specialist for First Union Bank, which later became Wachovia Bank. Kathleen Lovelace, 35, of Kearny, N.J., a former assistant manager at Commerce Bank and former employee of PNC Bank. James DiGangi, 27, of Elmwood Park., N.J., a former employee of Commerce Bank and PNC Bank. Anthony Diamanti, 29, of Clifton, N.J., a former employee of Commerce Bank and of PNC Bank.