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$100,000 bounty offered for stolen PC

Reuters

November 24, 2003, 5:08 AM PT

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5110830.html

SAN FRANCISCO--Wells Fargo said on Friday it had offered a $100,000 reward for
information leading to the arrest and conviction of the burglar who stole a
bank consultant's computer that had sensitive customer information on it.

The computer was one of several stolen earlier this month from the office of an
analyst for the bank in Concord, California, the bank said.

The stolen PC contained names, addresses, bank account numbers and social
security numbers for customers who had taken out personal lines of credit that
are used for consumer loans and overdraft protection, according to Wells Fargo.


No passwords or personal identification numbers were among the stolen data and
no other Wells Fargo customers were affected, the bank said.

Under a California law enacted earlier this year aimed at curtailing identity
theft, companies are required to notify customers when their computerized
personal information is believed to have been stolen.

Citing the ongoing police investigation, Lynn Greenwood, senior vice president
of Wells Fargo's home and consumer finance group she could not say how many
customers might be affected.

"There is absolutely no indication anybody is misusing this information," she
said. "We really, really regret this and are doing everything we possibly can
to protect our customers."

The bank alerted affected customers this week, she said.

Greenwood said the bank was also monitoring customer accounts, changing account
numbers and paying for a year's subscription to a credit monitoring service.

The company, which set up a tip hotline at +1-800-782-7463, said it would
ensure that customers are not affected financially by any unauthorized activity
on their accounts.

The San Francisco-based bank has about 22 million customers in 22 states, but
only a "small percentage" of those were affected, she said.






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Necessity is the Mother of invention.

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