A federal jury on Thursday awarded $800,000 to a woman who claimed that a credit-reporting agency falsely branded her as a Colombian drug dealer when it confused her with someone on the U.S. Treasury Department’s watchlist of known narcotics traffickers.
Plaintiff Sandra Cortez, 62, claimed that the error created humiliating ordeals when she was trying to buy a car and later when she was renting an apartment, but that Trans Union ignored her repeated pleas to have the erroneous information taken off her credit report.
