The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce has been faxing confidential information about hundreds of its customers to a scrap yard operator in West Virginia for more than three years, and he says he can't get them to stop.

Wade Peer says he has been overwhelmed since 2001 by internal CIBC fund transfer request forms containing the social security numbers, home addresses, phone numbers and detailed bank account data of several hundred bank customers.

"Had I been a bad guy, I could have got credit cards in their name, I could have assumed their identity. I could have transferred money out of their bank accounts and they'd never know that it happened," Peer told CTV's David Akin in an interview Tuesday at his 30-acre scrap yard in the rolling hills of West Virginia.

He claims the fax traffic from CIBC prevented him from communicating with his own customers and forced him to shut down one of his businesses.

Peer said that even though he alerted CIBC to the error in 2001, he continues to receive the faxes, including one on Monday. They originate, he says, at CIBC branches from Vancouver to Halifax and are apparently intended to be transmitted to what the bank calls its central faxing unit.

"We contacted them but we couldn't get the time of day," Peer said. "[They said], 'Sorry, not our problem.' They were rude and hung up the telephone.

"Some of these accounts are people's nest eggs. It's what they plan on retiring on. CIBC doesn't care about it. If they did, they'd have stopped it."

The CIBC disputes Peer's account. It said in a written statement that it responded in March 2002 and believed that the problem was resolved. The bank said it was "a disturbing revelation" to learn that Peer was continuing to receive the faxes.

"CIBC takes the confidentiality of its customers' personal information very seriously. We are undertaking a full review of this matter in light of these more
recent developments to see what can be done to eliminate human error in the faxing process," CIBC spokesman Rob McLeod said in his written statement.

A CIBC customer whose confidential information was faxed to Peer's business was scared and angry when told this week about the situation.

"This, to me, is everyone's nightmare come to life. This is a disaster waiting to happen to me," said the customer, who asked for anonymity. "My privacy has been violated royally."

Peer said that in an effort to get the bank to change, he telephoned some of the CIBC customers in 2002 to inform them that the bank was transmitting their personal and financial information to him.

"They were not real happy. When we started reading off the information that we had - your social security number, your bank account number, your telephone number, all the information -- they were real unhappy about it," Peer said.

He suspects the foul-up might have been caused by an error in instructions that CIBC branches received for transmitting data to the bank's central faxing unit in Toronto.

Peer acquired a toll-free fax number for an auto accessories business he started in 1999. That number is 1-877-777-2774. The fax number for CIBC's central fax unit is 1-877-772-7749. Peer believes that CIBC may have distributed a number to their branches that contained an extra '7' after the '8', pushing the '9' out of the real CIBC sequence and transforming the number into Peer's fax number.

The CIBC's McLeod said instructions sent by head office contained only correct fax numbers.

Peer, who said he immediately recognized the sensitive nature of the data that was flooding in, shredded many of the first faxes he received. They were all fund transfer requests for retirement savings plans and retirement income funds.

"I'm not even comfortable having this information," he said.

Peer has filed a lawsuit against CIBC on behalf of his failed auto accessories business, AllStar Sportsline Products Inc. that accuses the bank of negligence and seeks $3-million US in damages.

CIBC, in documents filed with the court, denies the allegations that it harmed Peer's business. Moreover, the bank said in a court filing that AllStar failed to co-operate with CIBC's attempts to resolve the problem.

CIBC customers who think their information may have been faxed to Peer can contact David Akin at dakin@ctv.ca