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By Siobhan Kennedy
NEW YORK, Nov 25 (Reuters) - U.S. authorities charged three men with orchestrating the largest identity theft scheme in U.S. history, a scam that "picked the pockets" of thousands of consumers to steal millions of dollars.
Announcing the arrests on Monday, Manhattan U.S Attorney James Comey said more than 30,000 consumers across the United States were affected. Authorities pegged losses at $2.7 million, which Comey said could rise as the investigation unfolds.
"With a few keystrokes, these men essentially picked the pockets of tens of thousands of Americans and, in the process, took their identities, stole their money and swiped their security," he told a press conference.
Comey said the scheme was orchestrated by Philip Cummings, a 33-year old employee at Teledata Communications, Inc, of Bayshore, New York. Teledata provides banks and other corporations with access to consumer credit information from the three commercial credit bureaus -- Equifax Inc , Experian and TranSunion.
None of the credit bureaus was implicated in the scheme, authorities said. Teledata said in a statement that it cooperated in the investigation, but declined to comment on the arrest.
Comey said Cummings had agreed to provide credit details to a co-conspirator, in return for money.
He said Cummings was provided with a "wish list" of desired reports and, using stolen passwords, Cummings accessed the documents and allegedly sold them to a network of more than 20 individuals of Nigerian descent in the Brooklyn and Bronx suburbs of New York.
Those individuals allegedly used the personal information -- credit card and bank account details and social security numbers -- to make money.
They allegedly paid $60 per report, half of which was split with Cummings, Comey said.
Authorities said Ford Motor Credit Corp. was one such company whose confidential password and subscriber code were allegedly stolen and used by Cummings to access 15,000 credit reports from Experian over a 10-month time period.
Ford discovered the scheme after reviewing bills sent by Experian and after receiving numerous complaints from its customers, investigators said.
After searching its database, Experian found that passwords of Washington Mutual Bank in Florida and Washington Mutual Finance in Crossville, Tennessee, had also been hacked into, with 6,000 other credit reports illegally siphoned off.
"It was every American's worst financial nightmare," Comey said.
Cummings, with two other defendants -- Linus Baptiste and Hakeem Mohammed -- allegedly started the scheme in early 2000. Baptiste was arrested in early October and Cummings turned himself in earlier on Monday, Comey said. The ages of Baptiste and Mohammed were not disclosed in court documents.
Comey added that his office had sent letters to the 30,000 victims asking for additional information. He said consumers looking for more information about the fraud should go to http://www.ftc.gov or call 1877-IDTHEFT.