Morgan Keegan is dealing with a fresh headache after confidential data on 18,500 brokerage clients were mistankenly released by the Alabama securities regulator. The Wall Street Journal's Carrick Mollenkamp picked up on the error.

Morgan Keegan handed over the data -- including clients' names, tax idenitification, a range of annual income and net worth and losses incurred -- to the Alabama regulator in January as part of a probe into how Morgan Keegan sold proporietary funds that made subprime bets.

Here's how the WSJ recounted the data breach:

The slip-up came in April when Birmingham securities litigator Andrew Campbell requested legal exhibits filed with the Alabama Securities Commission's legal filing against Morgan Keegan. Mr. Campbell wanted the information because he is representing Morgan Keegan clients in arbitration against the brokerage. Mr. Campbell also is one of two private attorneys who sit on the commission.

When Mr. Campbell, a partner at Leitman, Siegal, Payne & Campbell, couldn't access the publicly available exhibits online, his paralegal requested a certified copy from the commission. His office received a computer disk with the exhibits, including the customer information.

Morgan Keegan executives learned of the breach on September 15 and informed its customers on Monday that client data made their way into Campbell's office. Campbell, for his, part, said he returned the disk to the commission and that he never looked at the data. 

Edited by: Armie Margaret Lee


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