Equifax Leadership Dumped Stock Before Announcing Data Breach

ATLANTA, GA — Congress is pressing Equifax for detailed information about its internal operations after it was revealed that three top executives sold nearly 2 million dollars worth of stock shortly after the credit-monitoring company suffered a massive cyberattack that exposed sensitive personal information of 143 million Americans, which was announced last week.

The sales, first reported by Bloomberg, have been confirmed by the company. However, Equifax denied in an email to Bloomberg that any of the executives had "knowledge that an intrusion had occurred at the time" they sold the stock.

In a letter sent Monday afternoon, the Senate Commerce Committee asked for a "detailed timeline of the breach," including "notification of Equifax senior executives."

Since announcing the massive data breach, Equifax has come under heavy criticism. Eric Schneiderman, New York's attorney general, has already announced an investigation into the incident. Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin asked the Senate Commerce Committee to hold hearings on the matter. Many critics argued that Equifax's major purpose as a company is to collect consumer data, making its failure to sufficiently protect this information particularly egregious. (For local Atlanta news, subscribe for free to the Atlanta Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts. For more national stories, subscribe to the Across America Patch.)

Watch: Expert, 'No Way' To Get Back Stolen Equifax Data

A class action lawsuit filed by top firms Olsen Daines PC and Geragos & Geragos has already been filed in Portland, Oregon, seeing as much as $70 billion in damages for not protecting consumer data.

According to data filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Chief Financial Officer John Gamble sold $946,374 worth of stock on Aug. 1, just days after the breach was discovered on July 29. President of U.S. Information Solutions Joseph Loughran sold $584,099 in stock that same day, and Rodolfo Ploder, president of workforce solutions, unloaded $250,458 worth of stock on Aug. 2.

By late afternoon Friday, the day after the breach was announced, Equifax stock was down more than 13 percent.

Equifax did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

In a statement to TechCrunch, though, the company referred to the stock sales by top executives as making up a "small percentage of their Equifax shares." TechCrunch points out, however, that "while $946,374 might not seem like a lot for a CFO, it’s actually over 15 percent of his holdings."

For more information about the incident, and what you should do as a potential victim of the data breach, read more on Patch.

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