Canadian involved in Paddy Power security breach steps forward

A Canadian resident, Jason Ferguson, has identified himself as the man who ended up with the details of over 650,000 Paddy Power players, allegedly obtained through a security breach back in 2010.

The betting company has only recently publicly acknowledged the breach following its launch of legal proceedings in Canada (see previous reports).

Ferguson is a veteran sports handicapper who claims that he obtained the Paddy Power player details from an unidentified third party in what he assumed was a legal agreement.

“In this industry almost 90% of companies, if not more, procure targeted leads to market their brands and products,” he claimed in a statement Thursday, observing that this sort of deal was common practice in the internet gambling business.

In the statement, Ferguson explains that he is the person against whom Paddy Power and Leisure Gaming Group launched a civil suit in May and July 2014.

“They executed a search and seizure order as they were under the assumption I had in my possession a copy of a paddy power database that was hacked and stolen in 2010,” he continues.

“I cooperated with the authorities and Paddy Power litigation. I provided all help they needed to clear my name as the perpetrator of their breach.

“In 2013 December, I had purchased a lot of data, containing approximately 40 files. I was going to do a casino affiliate campaign and I thought the targeted gamblers data would be a good option at the time. In that lot of data I had purchased was a copy of approximately 650K Paddy Power customers but I was unsure if the file had been doctored or not to make it appear like they were active gamblers.”

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