TRENTON, N.J. – Three credit unions and two banks last week became the first financial institutions to seek recompense through the courts against Heartland Payment Systems for one of the biggest credit card breaches ever.
In a civil suit filed last week Matadors Community CU, GECU and MidFlorida FCU, and two banks, ask the federal court here to order Heartland to compensate the for millions of dollars already spent to notify customers, replace credit/debit cards and compensate customers for fraud as a result of the massive breach.
The two banks are Amalgamated Bank of New York and Farmers State Bank of Iowa.
The suit comes as thousands of credit unions are cancelling and replacing cards and reporting increasing incidents of fraud on compromised cards. In addition, Visa reported Friday that the rapidly increasing number of reports of cancelled cards is from the Heartland breach and not a new case, as reported in some media.
In their suit, the credit unions say their members credit/debit numbers, expiration dates, internal bank codes, personal identification and confidential financial information has been exposed by the huge breach and ask the court to award them reimbursement for out-of-pocket expenses accrued to stem the breach, as well as millions of dollars in damages.
Heartland, based in Princeton, N.J., is processes accounts for more than 250,000 merchants around the country, processing about 100 million card transactions a month.
