(KNOX) –North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison are two of 42 state attorneys general who reached a settlement with the bankruptcy trustee for 23andMe. The settlement involves claims from a 2023 data breach that exposed the genetic data of 6.9 million worldwide customers.
The settlement is for $18 million, which is a small part of the $100 billion in damages the states were originally seeing. Minnesota will receive $514,871 and North Dakota will receive $150,380. The settlement still needs court approval and a hearing for that is scheduled for August 10.
The data breach happened in October 2023, and it resulted in genetic ancestry data being published for sale on the dark web. 92,385 Minnesotans were among the millions affected.
Investigators found that 23andMe originally denied the breach, but then they blamed customers for how their accounts and passwords were being set up and handled. The company was found to have failed to enact basic data security safeguards. Some of those safety guards that weren’t enacted were protections against credential-stuffing attacks and multifactor authentication requirements.
23andMe filed for bankruptcy in March 2025. The company’s consumer data was eventually sold to TTAM Research Institute. TTAM Research Institute is a nonprofit formed by 23andMe founder and former CEO Anne Wojcicki. It has now been re-registered as the 23andMe Research Institute. The settlement also states that 23andMe is barred from participating in both direct consumer sales and from collecting personal information that can be identified for five years.
Another $47 million class-action settlement for consumers, which is another case, is also included of the bankruptcy proceedings.
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