Claiming $20 million in identity theft damages, 16 Ventura County residents have sued Countrywide Financial Corp., the defunct subprime lender now owned by Bank of America.

The lawsuit comes after the 2008 arrest of two men, one of them a Countrywide analyst, who were accused of stealing and then selling the identity information of 2.4 million Countrywide customers over the course of two years.

The arrests triggered a flood of about three dozen class-action lawsuits. In December, a federal judge in Kentucky gave preliminary approval to a settlement agreement that would provide reimbursement to as many as 17 million Countrywide customers whose data may have been exposed.

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