Top Class Actions’s website and social media posts use affiliate links. If you make a purchase using such links, we may receive a commission, but it will not result in any additional charges to you. Please review our Affiliate Link Disclosure for more information.
An online payment portal that consumers use to pay their utilities allowed multiple cyber hacks, leading to people’s credit card information being sold on the dark web, a new nationwide class action lawsuit alleges.
Plaintiff Amanda Fischer filed the complaint against CentralSquare on Wednesday in the Southern District of Florida Fort Lauderdale Division. CentralSquare is used by municipalities across the country to collect various payments, including utility bills, parking tickets and taxes.
“This is an action to recover damages from CentralSquare for the harm it caused Plaintiff and a nationwide class of persons whose payment card information was stolen as a result of a data breach on CentralSquare’s payment software, Click2Gov,” the class action states.
Fischer says she used her debit card to pay her City of Margate, Florida, utility bill online through CentralSquare’s Click2Gov program. Afterwards, on three separate occasions, she discovered someone had stolen money from her checking account.
Between April and August 2017, three fraudulent transactions were made using the debit card that she used to pay her Margate water bill on the Click2Gov software. Altogether, a thief stole $366.74 from her bank checking account, she says.
In August, the city advised her about the Click2Gov data breach. On Oct. 13, 2017, Superion (now CentralSquare) CEO, Simon Angove, released a statement acknowledging its Click2Gov online utilities payment portal customers had experienced a data breach, the class action states.
“This is far from the first time CentralSquare has suffered a payment card data breach. Since mid-2017, hackers have been attracted to CentralSquare’s Click2Gov payment portal like flies to a carcass,” the class action says.
This first wave of cyberattacks against CentralSquare began in 2017 and ended in 2018, according to the class action, resulting in cyber criminals stealing the payment card and related information of at least 300,000 people and selling it to identity thieves on the dark web.
Victims were residents of dozens of small-to-medium-sized municipalities across the United States, the class action states.
Fischer is seeking to represent a nationwide Class of people whose payment card information was compromised in the 2017/2018 wave of data breaches affecting the Click2Gov payment platform, plus a City of Margate subclass.
She says data breach victims suffered fraudulent charges, had their payment cards canceled, lost use of their funds and lost time contesting charges and “frantically trying to claw back funds stolen from their bank accounts.”
Fischer adds that, after the 2017/18 breach, two more waves of hacks happened, when CentralSquare should have been “so fully on guard against cyber-hackers that nothing like this could happen again.”
“But they weren’t, and it did happen again.”
Fischer is suing for negligence, breach of contract and breach of confidence and seeking certification of the class action, damages, restitution, and injunction to protect against the recurrence of data breaches in the company by implementing better data safety security, costs, interest and a jury trial.
Anyone can be affected by a data breach. If you’ve ever gone shopping online, were treated by a doctor, enrolled in school, gotten a job, applied for a credit card, stayed at a hotel, joined a gym, used social media, or signed up for a bank account, your personally identifiable information is put into a database and stored electronically. Click here to learn more about how to keep your data safe.
Do you use online payment portals to pay your bills? Let us know in the comments what you think of this class action!
The CentralSquare Data Breach Class Action Lawsuit is Amanda Fischer et al., v. CentralSquare Technologies, LLC, Case No. 0:21-cv-60856-XXXX, in the United States District Court Southern District of Florida Fort Lauderdale Division.
Read About More Class Action Lawsuits & Class Action Settlements:
