From the ICO:
Former employees of Enterprise-Rent-A-Car have been sentenced for conspiring to steal customer information that accident claims companies could use to make nuisance calls and sell on as personal injury claims.
Details of tens of thousands of customers from the car hire company were sold for hundreds of thousands of pounds, leading to unlawful contact from ‘ambulance chasers’ making cold calls about personal injury, in a scheme that ran for almost two and a half years.
Andrew Minty, Jamie Leong and Michelle Craddock, who at various times worked for Enterprise in Cardiff or Aldershot, all pleaded guilty at Winchester Crown Court on 4 January to conspiracy to commit offences under the Data Protection Act.
Minty was fined £7,500, which he has to pay within two years or face three months custody. Leong and Craddock, who had less involvement in the conspiracy and had either paid greater amounts of damages or been affected more by previous civil proceedings, were given 12 month conditional discharges but ordered to pay £3,000 and £1,200 in prosecution costs respectively.
As well as this week’s criminal proceedings brought by the Information Commissioner’s Office, Enterprise-Rent-A-Car has previously issued civil proceedings against the defendants. This resulted in the defendants paying the company £400,000 in civil compensation in total between them.
A fourth defendant remains wanted on a warrant.
SOURCE: Information Commissioner’s Office