More details have emerged on the previously reported Greenshades hack that resulted in tax refund fraud for many people. A reader of DataBreaches.net sent me an email this morning telling me that a relative who works for medical care provider NextCare received the following letter:
Dear NextCare Employee,
This is a notice for an ongoing internal investigation and should be kept completely confidential.
We have received notice from Greenshades, our Payroll Service provider, that a
data compromise of personal information has affected some of our NextCare team members. NextCare has received reports of fraudulent activity affecting some of our employee’s bank accounts and tax returns. So far, we have received less than 40 reports from NextCare employees. We are communicating this now in order to be as transparent as possible while we move forward with the
investigation.Here is what we know so far: Unidentified hackers were apparently able to
breach Greenshades online payroll system for NextCare, and possibly other
Greenshades customers. They are attempting to redirect bank accounts for
direct deposits. We have an internal control requiring Payroll to approve any
changes. The control worked in that we caught this immediately and believe
that only one payroll deposit was compromised, which we have fixed. All
individuals affected by this were contacted immediately. Unfortunately, we
have also received reports from some of our employees that hackers have
attempted to file false tax returns using the information gathered during the
hack.It is not yet clear to us the extent of data that has been breached. Thus, given the severity of this situation, NextCare’s number one priority is to protect our NextCare team members from future attacks with the compromised information. We have a dedicated team in the Corporate Office working tirelessly to gather more information and plan to report all updates expressly.
Here’s what you need to do:
1. Call Your Bank
Contact your bank(s) immediately and report that your account number and/or
routing information may have been compromised. Your bank will advise you on next steps or recommendations on how to proceed with changes or security updates.2. Contact the IRS
Be proactive in contacting the IRS’ Identity Protection Specialized Unit (IPSU) at 800-908-4490 and report that your account may have been compromised. IPSU employees are available to answer questions about identity theft and resolve any tax account issues that resulted from any possible identity theft.If you receive a notice from the IRS that leads you to believe someone may
have used your social security number fraudulently, please notify the IRS
immediately by responding to the name and number printed on the notice or
letter. You may also wish to contact your tax consultant for additional
recommendations.Here’s what NextCare is doing:
1. We have currently disabled any employee access to the Greenshades payroll portal in order to provide authorities with a clean environment for investigation.
2. NextCare has contacted several federal agencies including the IRS, FBI, FTC and local law enforcement authorities to alert them of the breach and work closely to gather all pertinent details for the investigation.
3. Our teams in IT, Payroll and HR are working with Greenshades and data
security professionals to establish a clear resolution and path for next steps
for our NextCare employees.4. NextCare has created a general inbox – [redacted by DataBreaches.net]- to gather any new employee evidence on fraudulent activity. All email will be handled by our internal Corporate Team. Should you have any new information for our team that’s pertinent to the investigation, please contact us immediately.
We are going to provide more information as it becomes available. Please hold
off on any general questions until our next update. We will communicate to our
NextCare team no later than TOMORROW March 10, 2016 with our next update on the breach.