NEW YORK (AP) -- Three men have been charged with allegedly running a high-tech scheme to steal credit information from thousands of victims, a crime authorities said represented "every American's worst financial nightmare multiplied tens of thousands of times."

Losses from the scam were put at $2.7 million and could grow as more victims are identified, U.S. Attorney James B. Comey said Monday. He warned consumers to check their accounts for signs of tampering.

Some victims had their bank accounts drained, addresses changed, lines of credit opened and new credit cards issued without approval. "A lot of people were ruined financially and their credit was ruined," Comey said.

Comey said credit information for some 30,000 people was stolen and authorities are trying to determine how many of those individuals were victimized.

Authorities said the scheme began about three years ago when Philip Cummings, a help-desk worker at Teledata Communications, sold passwords and codes for downloading consumer credit reports to an unidentified person. Teledata, a software company, provides banks with computerized access to credit information databases.

Cummings was allegedly paid roughly $30 for each report, and the information was then passed on to at least 20 other people, who set out to make money from the stolen information, prosecutors said.

More than 15,000 credit reports were stolen from Experian, a credit history bureau, using passwords belonging to Ford Motor Credit Corp., officials said.

They said thousands of other credit reports were stolen from companies such as Washington Mutual Finance Co. in Crossville, Tenn.; Dollar Bank in Cleveland; Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Center in Illinois; the Personal Finance Co. in Frankfort, Ind.; the Medical Bureau in Clearwater, Fla.; Vintage Apartments in Houston; and Community Bank of Chaska in Chaska, Minn.

Cummings, 33, of Cartersville, Ga., was released on $500,000 bond after an appearance in Manhattan federal court Monday. In addition to Cummings, the FBI also charged Linus Baptiste and Hakeem Mohammed in the fraud.

Baptiste allegedly downloaded hundreds of credit reports with Cummings' access passwords.