From the press release: Financial institutions representing more than 97 percent of eligible Visa-branded credit and debit cards have accepted the Alternative Recovery Offers they received pursuant to the settlement entered into by Visa Inc. (NYSE:V), Heartland Payment Systems® (NYSE: HPY) and Heartland’s sponsoring acquirers last month. This level of acceptance fulfills the 80 percent…
Category: Financial Sector
Why Germany Is Paying Millions in Ransom For Stolen Bank Data
Tristiana Moore reports: The announcement may have caused some super-rich Germans to tremble in their designer shoes. On Tuesday, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaüble said the government has agreed to buy a computer CD from an anonymous informant that contains the stolen bank details of up to 1,500 people suspected of evading German taxes by…
Informant offers to sell names of tax dodgers (updated)
A secret informant has offered to sell the German taxman the names of 1,500 Germans who have funds hidden in Switzerland, a newspaper reported Saturday. The daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said the unnamed whistleblower had supplied details of five accounts worth some €1 million ($1.4 million) in tax as proof and demanded €2.5 million for…
UK: Skipton faces fine for serious data breach
Jeff Prestridge reports: Skipton Building Society faces a heavy fine from the Financial Services Authority after a serious breach of data security procedures that resulted in more than 3,000 savers receiving financial details about other customers of the mutual. […] When Skipton mailed 108,000 account statements to savers last weekend, 3,115 went out with the…
MN: Stolen mortgage info led to spree
James Walsh reports: Jason Alan Tauer worked for Ameriquest Mortgage Company as a mortgage associate for only six weeks. Turned out to be a pretty fruitful month and a half for Tauer — and a pretty costly one to nearly 100 people and several financial institutions. Using personal information he lifted from the mortgage applications…
Telemarketers and Five Banks Are in Cahoots, Class Claims
Barbara Leonard reports: Five national banks helped “unscrupulous telemarketers” launder millions of dollars they swiped from consumers, a class action claims in Philadelphia Federal Court. The class sued three processing companies – NetDeposit, MP Technologies dba Modern Payments and Teledraft – and five banks: Zions First National Bank of Utah, Wells Fargo, Wachovia, National Penn…