Cindy Romero, a/k/a Cricket Romero, age 50, a resident of Metairie, Louisiana, pled guilty yesterday in federal court before U.S. District Judge Lance M. Africk to conspiracy to commit identity theft, announced U. S. Attorney Jim Letten.
According to court documents, Romero admitted that while employed by the Louisiana Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association (HBPA), she conspired with Sean Alfortish, an attorney and HBPA president running for his second term, and Mona Romero, HBPA Executive Director, to rig the outcome of the HBPA March 2008 election by using Social Security numbers of HBPA members in connection with the federal crime of mail fraud.
According to the factual basis, in order for ballots to be counted as valid, they had to bear the Social Security number of a member eligible to vote and the ballot had to be received via the U.S. mail. Romero admitted she conspired with others to identify members unlikely to vote, falsified election ballots, enclosed the ballots in envelopes and marked the envelopes with the members’ Social Security numbers. She also admitted she travelled to various cities where likely nonvoters lived for the purpose of mailing the falsified election ballots from those cities.
Romero, faces a maximum penalty of five (5) years imprisonment, a $250,000 fine and three (3) years supervised release. Sentencing has been scheduled for March 24, 2011.
Source: U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of Louisiana
I’m not even sure this is a breach but rather just fraud. My outrage is that the members had to include a SSN on a ballot that went through the mail. Haven’t we learned better than this yet? This could have been another paper breach! It could have been a lot worse than a rigged election.
Is anyone listening?
A voting record was created with an individual’s SSN attached to it. I’d consider that misuse of PII and it’s a breach because an insider with access to SSN misused the PII that they were responsible for protecting.