IDG News Service —

Black market criminals are offering to sell details on 21 million German bank accounts for €12 million (US$15.3 million), according to an investigative report published Saturday.

Reporters for WirtschaftsWoche (Economic Week) managed to obtain a CD containing 1.2 million accounts after a November face-to-face meeting with criminals in a Hamburg hotel, according to the magazine.

Posing as buyers working for a gambling business, the journalists were able to strike a price of €0.55 per record, or €12 million for all the data. They were given a CD containing the 1.2 million accounts when they asked for assurances that the information they would be buying was legitimate.

That CD contained the names, addresses, phone numbers, birthdays, account numbers and bank routing numbers of the theft victims, they reported. In some cases, the victim's account balance was also provided. The data was most likely collected from call center employees, the magazine reports.

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