Tech

Three Equifax executives sold $2 million worth of shares days after cyberattack

Key Points
  • Three Equifax executives sold shares worth nearly $2 million in the company days after a data breach was discovered, according to filings to the SEC
  • The company said the trio "had no knowledge that an intrusion had occurred at the time they sold their shares"
Equifax execs sold $2M worth of shares after cyberattack
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Equifax execs sold $2M worth of shares after cyberattack

Three executives of Equifax sold shares worth nearly $2 million in the company days after a data breach was found to affect 143 million consumers in the United States, filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission showed.

The fillings showed that the trio – Chief Financial Officer John Gamble Jr., workforce solutions president Rodolfo Ploder and U.S. information solutions president Joseph Loughran – offloaded the shares on August 1 and August 2.

Equifax said on Thursday it discovered a data breach on July 29. The credit reporting firm said the exposed data included names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, addresses and some driver's licence numbers.

Equifax says data breach could potentially affect 143 million US consumers
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Equifax says data breach could potentially affect 143 million US consumers

The company added that 209,000 U.S. credit card numbers were obtained, in addition to "certain dispute documents with personal identifying information for approximately 182,000 U.S. consumers."

Equifax acknowledged in a statement that the three executives sold a "small percentage" of their shares, but that they "had no knowledge that an intrusion had occurred at the time they sold their shares."

The SEC declined to comment on the share sales.

— CNBC's Mike Calia contributed to this report.

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