Back in June 2012, the Department of Justice announced that Alci Bonannee had been arrested and charged with ID theft in a massive tax refund fraud scheme. At the time, they found evidence that over 1,000 fraudulent returns had been filed by Bonannee and her co-conspirators between January 2011 and June 6, 2012.
This week, Bonannee was convicted. Federal prosecutors claim that the ring that she headed had netted $11 million in federal tax refunds and involved the filing of approximately 2,000 fraudulent tax returns between December 2010 and June 2012.
Bonannee theoretically faces 351 years in prison when she’s sentenced. It would be nice if the DOJ press releases gave us a best guess of what the defendant will likely be sentenced to, as these “potentially faces” numbers are just not realistic.
This time, however, the government’s press release does give us some information about the source of the stolen identity information:
The defendant filed many of these fraudulent returns using compromised personal identification information obtained from a nurse at a local hospital.
So… which hospital breach was this and did we know about it? There have been a number of insider thefts at Florida hospitals, some of which I’ve covered on PHIprivacy.net, but which one involved a nurse and pre-dated December 2010 when the ring started filing fraudulent returns? Neither of Bonannee’s two co-conspirators – Chante Mozley and Sonyini Clay – appear to be the employee who provided the information. Was the employee ever prosecuted?
And when were patients whose information was stolen notified, and by whom?