Maryland financial regulators said there was no customer or bank data stored on two state laptop computers stolen from the cars of low-level bank auditors in 2004 and 2005.
“There was no bank data, there was no financial or customer data,” said Joseph Rooney, deputy commissioner of Financial Regulation at the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation.
Rooney mentioned the loss of the computers at Wednesday?s hearing of the Identity Theft Task Force.
“There?s no story here,” said Rhonda Wardlaw, the department?s communications director. Both laptops were stolen from locked car trunks, one parked outside of the division office at 500 N. Calvert St. in Baltimore.
Police reports were filed, but neither laptop was recovered.
The laptops were not much use to the thieves unless they were sophisticated computer operators, officials said. The devices needed an encrypted card, and the cards were not with the computers. And once the computer was powered up, the operator needed to provide several levels of passwords to gain access to the files.
“There?s still never any bank data on the computers,” except in summary or as a ratio, Rooney said. The computers are not connected to databases.
The Financial Regulation Division monitors 70 state chartered banks and credit unions, as well as 6,000 mortgage lenders.
