The United States Justice Department has opened up a criminal investigation into top officials at Equifax, following stock sales that occurred just before the company announced it had been hacked and exposed more than a 140 million Americans’ personal information.
Bloomberg reports the DOJ is looking into the sale of shares of stock along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Specifically, they are looking into stock sales by Equifax’s chief financial officer, president of U.S. information solutions, and president of workforce solutions.
Last week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) set her target on Equifax, calling for an investigation into consumer data security and introducing a bill to help consumers freeze their credit for free in wake of the massive data breach.
Earlier this month, Equifax announced it had been hacked in late July. Top executives sold $1.8 million worth of shares in early August, Bloomberg reports. The company denies that the executives knew of the breach before selling their shares of stock.
Equifax’s stock has fallen 35 percent since the disclosure of the data hack.
Equifax said hackers exploited an application vulnerability between mid-May and July and gained access to names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, and driver’s licence numbers of people.
You can read all of Bloomberg’s report here.