National Public Data Breach Class Action Lawsuit: Payout Unlikely

There is no active National Public Data breach class action lawsuit to join and no settlement to claim. The lead case, Hofmann v. Jerico Pictures, Inc., was voluntarily dismissed on July 21, 2025, and the company behind National Public Data has almost no assets left to pay victims.¹ If your information was exposed, the practical response is not a claim form. It is credit freezes, fraud alerts, and monitoring.

Where the Lawsuit Stands

Christopher Hofmann, a California resident, filed the lead class action against Jerico Pictures, Inc. on August 1, 2024, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Fort Lauderdale Division (Case No. 0:24-cv-61383).¹ The complaint alleged that the company scraped billions of records of personal information from non-public sources without consent, failed to encrypt or adequately secure the data, and failed to notify affected people in a timely way after the breach.²

By late 2024, roughly twenty class actions had been filed against the company, and more than twenty states were seeking civil penalties.³ Then the litigation stalled. After Jerico Pictures filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October 2024, the court in the Hofmann case stayed the proceedings. The stay held until Hofmann filed a notice of voluntary dismissal on July 21, 2025, and the court closed the case the next day.¹ The docket does not explain why.

No settlement has been announced in any of the cases. There is no claim form, no sign-up page, and no deadline to meet.

Why a Payout Is Unlikely

The company’s own bankruptcy filing tells the story. On October 2, 2024, Jerico Pictures filed for Chapter 11 (Subchapter V) in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida (Case No. 0:24-bk-20281-SMG).⁴ The filing put estimated assets between $25,000 and $75,000, with about $33,000 in a checking account and roughly $5,400 in office equipment. The entire business ran from owner Salvatore Verini Jr.’s home office using two desktops, a laptop, and five Dell servers.³

The company also told the court it carried no general liability insurance covering data breaches, and that it lacked the resources to notify affected individuals or provide credit monitoring as various state laws require.⁵

The bankruptcy did not stick. The U.S. Trustee filed an emergency motion to dismiss on October 23, 2024, and the court granted it on October 31, 2024.⁴ Creditors and regulators regained the right to pursue the company, but the underlying problem did not change: there is very little money to collect. One local news report quoted an observer saying it is “highly unlikely that consumers are going to see a dime from this whole thing, including any kind of credit monitoring.”⁶

What the Breach Exposed

National Public Data was a background-check service that pulled together personal records at scale. The stolen database contained roughly 2.9 billion rows totaling about 277.1 gigabytes, and included full names, Social Security numbers, phone numbers, email addresses, and residential addresses spanning decades. It also carried information about relatives, some of whom had been deceased for as long as twenty years.⁷

A group operating under the alias “USDoD” accessed the systems in December 2023.⁸ The data was published on a dark-web forum called “Breached” on April 8, 2024, offered for sale at $3.5 million.⁹ National Public Data did not publicly acknowledge the breach until after the first class action was filed in early August 2024.¹⁰

Because the company built its database from public and non-public sources without contacting the people in it, many affected consumers had never heard of National Public Data before the breach became news.

Other Actions Still in Motion

The class actions are not the only track. The California Privacy Protection Agency issued a $46,000 fine against National Public Data for registration violations. Multiple state attorneys general opened investigations, and the Federal Trade Commission opened a regulatory challenge.¹¹³ These proceedings run on their own timelines and could produce enforcement outcomes even where private litigation has stalled, though none of them creates a consumer claim form to fill out today.

How to Check if You Were Exposed

The public breach-notification site HaveIBeenPwned.com incorporates the NPD data and can confirm whether your email or personal information appears in the stolen database.¹¹ Given the size of the database, many U.S. adults should assume some exposure and act accordingly.

Steps to Protect Yourself

National Public Data did not offer credit monitoring or remediation, and its bankruptcy filing conceded it could not afford to.⁵ The protective steps are on you:

Place a free credit freeze at each of the three major bureaus: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. A freeze blocks new accounts from being opened in your name without your authorization.¹⁰
Add a fraud alert to your credit file. An initial alert lasts one year; confirmed identity-theft victims can request a seven-year extended alert.
Review bank and credit card statements regularly, and pull free credit reports at AnnualCreditReport.com.
If you see misuse, report it to the FTC at IdentityTheft.gov, and consider requesting an IRS Identity Protection PIN to help block tax-related fraud.

If you have documented, substantial losses tied to the breach, a privacy attorney can weigh whether individual claims against data purchasers or other involved parties might be viable, since the class action route against Jerico Pictures itself has effectively closed.¹¹

1
CourtListener. Hofmann v. Jerico Pictures, Inc.
2
The Register. National Public Data Class Action Lawsuit Complaint
3
Yahoo News. National Public Data Files Bankruptcy After Massive Data Breach
4
Inforuptcy. Bankruptcy Case – Jerico Pictures, Inc.
5
ITPro. National Public Data Has Filed for Bankruptcy
6
WGAL. National Public Data Bankruptcy After Massive Data Breach
7
IBM. National Public Data Breach Publishes Private Data of Billions of US Citizens
8
Microsoft. National Public Data Breach: What You Need To Know
9
Office of Congressman Ritchie Torres. Congressman Ritchie Torres Releases Investigative Report on Last Month’s National Public Data Breach
10
Office of Congressman Ritchie Torres. Investigative Report on the National Public Data Breach
11
Talli.ai. National Public Data (NPD) Breach Settlement