Personal information compromised after data breach at major mortgage company

PITTSBURGH — Channel 11 has learned that 14.7 million homeowners are impacted by the Mr. Cooper data breach. It impacts those who currently use the mortgage company as well as former customers.

Jay Bray, Chairman and CEO of Mr. Cooper sent out a letter to customers on Monday, letting them know about a data breach that happened in October. The company says its information security team identified the issue on Halloween and over the following weeks, identified that files containing borrowers’ personal information were stolen.

“It’s incredibly prevalent and the fraudsters are just getting better and better,” Brooklee Han, a real estate reporter for HousingWire, said.

Han covers wire fraud and cyber security and says while the Mr. Cooper breach is one of the larger ones she’s seen recently - it’s certainly not uncommon.

“I definitely don’t think it’s necessarily a reason for panic,” Han explained. “It’s definitely a reason for a healthy level of concern, but we’re just seeing data breaches so commonly across the real estate ecosystem right now that unfortunately it’s bound to happen at some point.”

Mr. Cooper says customers will receive a letter with details about any of their data that was involved. The mortgage company is also offering two years of free credit monitoring and identity protection to any customer who wants to enroll.

“Any information that is out there. If it’s still applicable to you or could lead back to any current personal information or personal data could be a key that if it gets in the wrong hands could still impact you years down the road,” Han said.

Mr. Cooper says it’s adding more security measures to help prevent an incident like this from happening again.

Han says the FBI is involved in trying to track down who these scammers are. She says she’s seen a huge uptick in scams and fraud since the pandemic.

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