Stolen loan data found in police evidence room

Senior executives of a company that guarantees federal student loans are breathing easier after stolen data on about 3 million borrowers turned up in a Minneapolis police evidence room, apparently uncompromised.

Two safes containing the data on DVDs were stolen over the weekend of March 20-21 from Educational Credit Management Corp. in Oakdale, in the eastern Twin Cities. Minnesota Financial Crimes Task Force investigators said Friday that police recovered the safes March 22 and stored them in the evidence room.

The Minnesota Department of Public Safety only recently connected the safes with the theft. Investigators say they are confident that all the discs - about 650 - have been recovered.

ECMC had received calls from borrowers worried that their personal information may have been compromised, company president and CEO Richard Boyle said. "This will now assuage some of those concerns, so we're happy," he told The Associated Press.

Boyle said the data included names, addresses and Social Security numbers for both borrowers and co-signers, but no information on bank accounts or credit cards.

State investigators have identified one suspect in the theft, who is in custody on an unrelated matter. No charges have been filed. Boyle said the suspect is not an ECMC employee and has never worked for the company.

Police were called to pick up the safes, each weighing 200 pounds, by a resident who found them at the end of a driveway in north Minneapolis, police spokesman Sgt. Jesse Garcia said. The safes had been pried open and empty, but police checked a trash can across the alley and discovered several hundred discs, Garcia said.

Officers were not aware of the weekend theft of the safes, Garcia said. "It's not uncommon for us to recover safes. We recover so much property," he said.

Police at first tried to read the discs but were unable to crack them, Garcia said. "The main thing is it (the data) sat in our property room, secure," he said.

After the theft, ECMC said it has arranged with credit protection agency Experian to provide affected borrowers with free credit monitoring and protection services.

ECMC is a contractor for the U.S. Department of Education to provide collection and document management services. It guarantees student loans through the Federal Family Education Loan program, and provides support services for student loans that are in default or bankruptcy. The company can act as the guarantor, loan holder or loan servicer.

After the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension analyzes the safes and their contents, the U.S. Department of Education Office of Inspector General will review the discs to determine definitively whether the information was compromised.

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