Ten state attorneys general oppose a three-day "Customer Appreciation" sale planned by TJX Cos. to help pay back customers hurt by a massive data breach, saying the biggest beneficiary would be the retailer's bottom line.
The 15 percent off "Customer Appreciation special event" that TJX described in disclosing its class-action settlement in September "is nothing more than a retail sale, which would primarily benefit the defendant, TJX Companies," Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said in a letter to the Boston-based judge considering approval of the settlement.
Coakley, who is leading a multistate probe of the data theft, wrote on behalf of nine other attorneys general
TJX, the owner of more than 2,500 off-price stores, plans a sale next year at all T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, HomeGoods, and A.J. Wright stores in the United States and Puerto Rico, and all Winners and HomeSense stores in Canada.
Coakley asked US District Court Judge William Young to reject counting the sale as a settlement benefit, or "at the very least, subject the Special Event to heightened scrutiny before approval."
TJX said in March at least 45.7 million cards were exposed to possible fraud in a breach of its computer systems that began in July 2005. But the breach wasn't detected until December 2006. Recent court filings by banks that are suing TJX estimate the number of cards affected at more than 100 million.
Sherry Lang, a spokeswoman for Framingham-based TJX, declined to comment on Coakley's letter, citing the pending litigation.
Coakley said it's unclear how the sale would help customers harmed by the breach, either because they replaced their credit cards or were targets of identity theft.
