Firm barred from selling, collecting financial data

Order protects Mass. residents

A Suffolk Superior Court judge yesterday temporarily barred an Ohio company from obtaining or selling personal financial information belonging to Massachusetts residents.

State Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly secured the emergency court order against Tracerservices.com, which operates under the name ICU Inc., after one of his investigators paid $320 for a colleague's Social Security number, credit report, and bank statement. Reilly's investigation mirrored one conducted by The Boston Globe last month.

"No one's personal financial information should be available on the open market," Reilly said in a statement. "This is a serious invasion of one's privacy that can easily result in devastating identity theft, and we won't ignore it."

Efforts to reach some of the principals at ICU, including Jacob Goldstein, Edward Carson, and David Gunn, were unsuccessful. Tom Wilson, who answered the phone at ICU and said he worked in the skip tracing department, said he was aware of the lawsuit and added that the company would abide by the terms of the restraining order.

Wilson declined to respond to charges that ICU, based in Berea, Ohio, had violated state and federal credit reporting and privacy laws in obtaining and selling the information.

Reilly's office purchased the Social Security number, credit report, and bank statement of Jesse M. Caplan, the chief of Reilly's consumer protection and antitrust division. Caplan said it was disturbing how easy it was to obtain the information.

"Think about what could be done with the information if it were to get into the hands of the wrong people," he said.

Trafficking in confidential financial information is fairly commonplace online. The Globe bought Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney's Social Security number and Trans-Union credit report in September from Goldshield Inc. of Colorado, and discovered in the process that credit reports are often sold from one party to the next with little control over the flow of information.

In January, the Globe contacted ICU and purchased bank and stock statements belonging to Eric F. Bourassa, a privacy advocate at the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group. The stock information was inaccurate, but the company did accurately identify his bank as FleetBoston Financial Corp. It also provided an account balance accurate to the penny, although the balance was for Bourassa's savings account rather than his checking account.

Reilly's investigators had a similar experience. They paid $50 for Caplan's Social Security number, and then paid $45 for Caplan's credit report and $225 for his bank account information. Caplan was never contacted by ICU, nor did he give any other firm permission to release his personal financial information.

According to an affidavit submitted by Caplan, the Social Security number and credit report were accurate, but the only part of the bank account information that was accurate was the name of his bank, Sovereign Bank.

The credit report was apparently provided to ICU by CBC Credit Services, an information services company based in Columbus, Ohio, that is authorized to resell credit reports generated by the three major credit reporting agencies -- Trans-Union, Equifax, and Experian. Efforts to reach officials at CBC were unsuccessful.

Third parties are allowed to gain access to credit reports only when the consumer is applying for credit, insurance, employment, or to rent an apartment. It is illegal for a third party to purchase or share a credit report for any other purpose.

The federal Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act prohibits financial institutions and third parties from sharing private financial information on a consumer without his or her consent. Using false pretenses or deceptive tactics to obtain such information is also prohibited.

The attorney general's investigator told ICU he was seeking the information on Caplan to help track him down, an obvious falsehood because the investigator supplied Caplan's address and birth date.

In the complaint, Reilly's office alleged that ICU used false pretenses or deceptive tactics to obtain Caplan's personal financial information, but offered no details on how that was done.

Suffolk Superior Court Judge Elizabeth M. Fahey issued yesterday's order and scheduled a hearing on the issue for next Friday. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant Attorney General Pamela Kogut.

Bruce Mohl can be reached at mohl@globe.com.