A Florida data broker that lost hundreds of millions of Social Security numbers and other personally identifiable information in a data breach earlier this year has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as the company faces a wave of litigation. .
Jericho Photos, the parent company of hacked data broker Nationwide Public Knowledge, told a Florida bankruptcy court that it was unlikely to be able to pay its debtors or address its anticipated liabilities and class actions, including payment “for credit monitoring.” of hundreds of millions of potentially affected people.”
In his initial filing, Jericho Photos owner Salvatore Verini said the company “faces substantial uncertainty in the face of regulatory challenges from the Federal Trade Commission and more than 20 states with civil penalties for data breaches.”
News of the bankruptcy was first reported by PCMag.
Since April, a hacker with a history of selling stolen data claimed to have breached National Public Data and stolen billions of records, affecting around 300 million people, making it one of the largest data breaches. big ones of the year.
According to the data broker's data breach notice on its website, the stolen data includes names, dates of birth, postal and email addresses, telephone numbers and Social Security numbers. Given the nature of the information data brokers collect, some of the stolen data was accurate, some was not, and many of it related to deceased people.
The company's stolen database contained about 270 million Social Security numbers in total, security researchers estimated.
According to bankruptcy filings, Verini valued the company's stolen database of Social Security numbers at $1 million. The filing also lists several other databases the company maintains as assets, but did not provide corresponding valuations. Those data sets belong to people authorized by the Drug Administration (DEA) to prescribe controlled substances; those with concealed weapons permits; and data banks containing public records, such as marriages, divorces, bankruptcy filings, and international financial sanctions; inter alia.
Lawsuits or enforcement actions are unlikely to result in any compensation for those affected, given how little remains in the company's coffers.
The data broker's bankruptcy filings revealed that its insurance provider “declined coverage” after the data breach, and that the company had less than $75,000 in total assets. Much of the company's revenue went toward bulk data purchases and Verini's salary as the company's sole operator. As required by the bankruptcy filing, the company disclosed net profits of $475,526 in 2022 and $865,149 during 2023.