There’s a follow-up to a breach previously reported on PHIprivacy.net.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida reports that Kenol Augustin, 36, was sentenced to 16 months in prison, followed by two years of supervised release, and was ordered to pay joint and several restitution of $57,000, for his role in the tax refund fraud scheme.
According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, in November 2014, an individual recruited into the scheme searched their employer’s database and accessed the names and Social Security numbers (personal identity information or PII) of individual medical patients. This employee then provided a list of individuals’ PII in exchange for a cash payment made by defendant Augustin. Augustin and his co-conspirators then caused false and fraudulent tax returns seeking refunds to be filed with the Internal Revenue Service using the PII that the conspirators had so obtained.
Although the covered entity was not named, I had previously suggested who it might be, based on my reading of court filings.