IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF GEORGIA
ATLANTA DIVISION
Ronald Sciortino on behalf of himself
and all others similarly situated
Plaintiff
v.
Merscorp Holding, Inc.
Defendants
Excerpt:
1.
This action seeks redress for Defendant’s refusal to comply with the
Fair Credit Reporting Act 15 U.S.C§ 1681et seq.(hereinafter “FCRA”) and
release the Plaintiff and putative Plaintiff’s consumer file upon request
and/or disclose the identity of each person (including each end-user
identified under section 1681e (e)(1) of the FCRA) that procured a consumer
report— (i) for employment purposes, during the 2-year period preceding
the date on which the request was made; or (ii) for any other purpose, during
the 1-year period preceding the date on which the request was made.
[…]
7.
According to the Defendant, it maintains a consumer “file” 3 on more than
sixty three million (63,000,000) “consumers” as that term is defined in the FCRA.
(See Exhibit “A” p. 1 Seamless MERS Integration)
8.
Defendant sells “consumer reports” 4 which is used or expected to be used
or collected in whole or in part for the purpose of serving as a factor in establishing
the consumer’s eligibility for— (A) credit or insurance to be used primarily for
personal, family, or household purposes; (B) employment purposes; or
(C) any other purpose authorized under section 1681b of the FCRA.
9.
Unbeknownst to residential mortgage applicants, when a mortgage is applied
for with a Fraud Alert member, regardless of whether or not it has been approved,
the mortgage application information is uploaded to MERS to be included in its
Fraud Alert database and a consumer file is created on that person or if ones exists
the information is merged into the existing file.
10.
The consumer report sold by the Defendant contains without limitation, the
following information, the consumers confidential social security number, date of
birth, age, height, weight, other identifying characteristics, home address, previous
address, occupation, mortgage loan amount, the creditor that issued the loan along
with the current servicer of the loan.
11.
For a small fee, any person or entity can access all the information in the
Fraud Alert database on any consumer at anytime using a website maintained by
the Defendant.
12.
Thus, consumers that have ever applied for a loan with a Fraud Alert
member are included in this database without their knowledge or consent,
including, without limitation, politicians, law enforcement officials, judges,
clergymen, high ranking military officers and other high profile individuals.
13.
Unlike Equifax, TranUnion and Experian, MERS does not have a policy in
place to prevent the disclose of consumers reports of high profile individuals,
indeed very few people outside the mortgage industry even know of the existence
of the secret database thereby making it ripe for exploitation for nefarious and
other illegal reasons such as identity theft.
[…]
