Ransomware group claims attack on mortgage lender Optimum First Mortgage

A threat group known as PEAR claimed responsibility June 19 for breaching Optimum First Mortgage, a mortgage lender based in Huntington Beach, California, and obtaining approximately 9.3 terabytes of company data. The company has not publicly responded to the claims as of June 25.

The threat group posted the claim on the dark web, stating that the compromised data reportedly includes financial records, human resources files, clients’ personal and financial information, personally identifiable information, protected health information records, email correspondence, database exports and OneDrive stored data. The specific categories affected both employees and customers of the company.

Optimum First Mortgage was founded in 2009 and operates in 15 states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Washington. The company has not disclosed the total number of individuals potentially affected by the breach or when the unauthorized access began. The timing of when company officials became aware of the intrusion has also not been made public.

The claims made by the PEAR group have not been independently confirmed. As of June 25, it is unclear whether Optimum First Mortgage has notified affected individuals, contacted law enforcement or hired a cybersecurity firm to investigate the incident.

Individuals who suspect they may have been compromised should monitor their bank and credit accounts for suspicious activity and contact Optimum First Mortgage directly for information about whether their data was affected.