Several years ago, Joe Lagennusa had a tough time making ends meet, so the Florida sales manager turned to online payday lenders. "I wish I never would have done it," he says. "I so, so learned my lesson." He's not talking about the sky-high rates. Two of his and his wife's bank accounts were hacked in November, and the thieves emptied them, making off with $1,100. The trail led back-through a person on a hacking forum who posted personal financial information from Lagennusa and thousands of others-to those payday loans. After IntelCrawler, a research division of identity theft protection service InfoArmor, discovered the hacker's posting, Bloomberg BusinessWeek contacted Lagennusa and dozens of others named in the posted files. Those people confirmed, based on the data provided, ! that the files came from their payday j loan applications. IntelCrawler began corresponding on the forum with the thief, who said he had access to data from 105 million other people.
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