Courts combine lawsuits against Patelco Credit Union after data breach

A dozen lawsuits against Patelco Credit Union have been combined in Alameda County Superior Court following a ransomware attack this summer. Plaintiffs allege negligence and violations of the California Consumer Privacy Act, claiming the attack affected over a million people. Patelco announced the cyberattack on June 29, which locked customers out of their online accounts for two weeks. The credit union reported $39 million in losses due to members overdrawing accounts during the outage and confirmed it did not pay the ransom. A case management conference is set for January 28, with no trial date established. Patelco is also facing additional lawsuits in federal court related to the same incident.