By letter to the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office dated March 29, Proxima Alfa Investments’ attorney-in-fact Publio Vallejo reported that backup tapes containing account information had been stolen more than six months ago.
A letter dated March 30 to the affected individual(s), states that the firm, which is in liquidation and had ceased operations mid-2009, discovered that an unspecified number of backup tapes as well as some other items were missing from the firm’s New York office. The discovery was made in November 2009, but it wasn’t until February 10 that the firm reportedly learned that information from New Hampshire residents were also on the missing tapes. The firm also subsequently determined that the tapes may have been stolen sometime between September 2009 and October 2009.
Personal information on the tapes included names, addresses, e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, Social Security numbers, bank account information, tax ID numbers, passport numbers, or scanned copies of passport. Not all information was necessarily on the tapes for any one individual. The firm reports that some of the tapes were encrypted, but that others, which were not encrypted, would be difficult to read due to the tapes’ “format and organization.”
The firm did not offer those affected any free services. They note that to bolster security, they have encrypted and biometrically protected all Proxima data in their possession and have stored it in a secure location.