PROVIDENCE – Two federal lawsuits have been filed against Citizens Financial Group Inc. subsidiary Citizens Bank following the company’s disclosure of a cybersecurity incident involving customer data extracted from a third-party vendor.
The lawsuits, filed April 22 in the U.S. District Court in Providence, allege negligence and seek damages related to the reported exposure of personal and financial information.
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Both lawsuits seek class-action status and damages of more than $5 million, according to court filings.
In one case, Lorien Hansford is suing Citizens Bank in a complaint filed before Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr.
Meanwhile, Jillian Russell Hauser is suing both Citizens Bank and Citizens Financial Group in a separate complaint assigned to Judge Melissa R. DuBose.
The lawsuits were filed a day after Citizens confirmed that it is investigating a cybersecurity incident involving a small number of customers whose data was extracted from a third-party vendor.
On April 23, Citizens spokesperson Rory Sheehan said the bank had not identified any fraud tied to the incident and that there was no evidence of unauthorized access to Citizens’ internal network.
“For Citizens, most of this was masked test data, although a limited set of information for a small number of customers was involved,” the bank said in an April 21 statement.
The bank said affected customers are being contacted directly and will receive complimentary account monitoring.
According to Citizens, the exposed information may include names, addresses and account numbers typically found on written checks.
The disclosure followed reports from cybersecurity researchers and media outlets that the Everest ransomware group claimed responsibility for posting data tied to Citizens on a dark web leak site, though those claims have not been independently verified.
Matthew McNulty is a PBN staff writer. He can be reached at McNulty@PBN.com or on X at @MattMcNultyNYC.
