This is a copy of my letter to their CEO
Angelo R. Mozilo
Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer
Countrywide Financial Corp
4500 Park Granada
Calabasas, CA 91302
Re: Loss Prevention Application No.: 13678739
Dear Mr. Mozilo:
I hold a mortgage and previously held stock in Countrywide Financial Corporation, luckily while it was doing well. My concern is not related directly to stock performance, but to loss prevention issues which may impact stock performance at a more direct level than we previously believed. I had a large-scale Identity Theft incident in with twenty-six fraudulent credit accounts found using my correct name and Social Security Number, but associated with four fraudulent addresses. Two of those were employees of financial institutions, and another was a credit collection attorney and member of the ACCA. I still do not know if they were all related to each other. I alerted all financial institutions and placed a permanent fraud alert with all three credit bureaus.
When I recently attempted to open a savings account through your Website, I received a call from Countrywide's Loss Prevention Department to verify my identity. This is normal with my fraud alert; however, when other institutions have called to verify, they seem to know which information truly identifies me, and which information is fraudulent.
My concern is that the representatives at Countrywide's Loss Prevention Department, Stacey Garcia and Maria Gillespie, were unable to distinguish between the correct and the fraudulent information.
Ms. Gillesepie admitted to me that if I had verified the fraudulent addresses as correct, instead of telling Ms. Garcia that they were fraudulent, she would have approved the application because her (Countrywide's) system was reporting those as legitimate! Although the account I am referring to here is a deposit account, not a credit or loan application, Ms. Gillespie confirmed that they used the same seventy public records sources for credit and mortgage applications.
Therefore, this issue is directly relevant to Countrywide's recent loan and mortgage problems. Ms. Gillespie was very insistent that Countrywide was NOT going to change its identity verification process, and was NOT going to change to another vendor to perform those inquiries.
With this letter, I am asking you if the information conveyed by these employees is correct. If so, stockholders and potential stockholders must be advised of thisloophole in Countrywide's lending practices, and of the risk for further identity theft and fraudulent loan incidents.
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