By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK, Aug 29 (Reuters) – Geico must face a proposed nationwide class action accusing the car insurer of violating customers’ privacy by disclosing hundreds of thousands of driver’s license numbers to identity thieves looking to collect fraudulent unemployment benefits.

In a decision on Monday, U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto in Brooklyn accepted a magistrate judge’s recommendation that Geico defend against claims it owed damages for negligence and for violating the federal Driver’s Privacy Protection Act.

Geico, a unit of billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, was accused of auto-populating driver’s license numbers into its online system when users entered “basic” information such as names, addresses and birth dates in order to obtain insurance quotations.

According to the lawsuit, this “quickly caught the attention” of criminals who breached Geico’s system between Nov. 24, 2020 and March 1, 2021, and used the license numbers to fraudulently apply for unemployment benefits under victims’ names.

The plaintiffs said Geico’s failure to safeguard their data exposed them to greater risk of fraud, and forced them to spend more time monitoring their bank accounts and credit.

Matsumoto said it was premature to accept Geico’s claim that it could not be the “proximate cause” of the plaintiffs’ alleged injuries, because the theft had been merely one component of a “concerted campaign by fraudsters” targeting insurers’ buy ielts/toefl english test certificates online quotation platforms.

Kristen Wenger, a lawyer for Geico, declined to comment. Lawyers for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Matsumoto accepted a July 21 recommendation by U.S. Magistrate Judge Sanket Bulsara to let the lawsuit proceed.

She also accepted his recommendation to dismiss claims that Geico violated a New York state consumer protection law and committed negligence “per se.”

The case is In re Geico Customer Data Breach Litigation, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York, No. 21-02210.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York Editing by Bill Berkrot)

A speeding Bentley was filmed smashing into multiple cars on an LA street – with a man found in the driver’s seat slurring as he denied he’d been behind the wheel.  

Video from a home’s security camera showed the Bentley speeding down a residential neighborhood in the city’s West Hills neighborhood at around 2am Tuesday morning, when it struck a parked car, apparently causing it to flip around on Vanowen Street, KTLA reported.  

The car was totally trashed, but despite the speed and force of the impact, its suspected driver was filmed conscious before he was pulled from the wreckage afterwards. 

A journalist who was first on the scene asked the unidentified man in the driver’s seat whether he was okay, prompting him to reply: ‘My brother was driving, not me. I was the passenger. Ask the guys, my friends.’

At that point, the journalist with OC Hawk asks why he was in the driver’s seat if he was not the one driving, to which the man said, slurring his words: ‘Right now we switched. Ask him, ask anybody.’ 

A home security video captured the moment a Bentley sped down a Los Angeles residential street at about 90mph early Tuesday morning

The man in the driver’s seat following the crash said he was not the one driving

The driver was transferred to a local hospital where he was listed in critical condition for internal injuries he sustained

Another man was seen being treated on the scene for injuries, but his condition and involvement in the crash remain unclear

It is unclear if anyone else was actually in the car with the man at the time. Besides the suspected driver – who cops believe was under the influence – no one else was visible, and police say the man in the driver’s seat is the only person in custody. 

One other person was treated at the scene, although it’s unclear if they were in the car. DailyMail.com has contacted the LAPD for further information.  

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Shortly after the smash, the man who denied he was the driver was filmed being stretchered into an ambulance.

He was taken to hospital suffering from internal injuries, buy novelty documents online and was described as being in a critical condition.     

In total, NBC 4 reports, four parked cars were damaged.  

The Bentley hit four cars as it sped down the road, including this one, which had its driver’s side completely smashed in

Los Angeles

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Bentley Crashes Into Cars on West Hills Street – NBC Los Angeles

ktla.com/news/lo…