One of the incidents the Veterans Administration reported to Congress for July affected thousands of veterans seen in South Carolina. The VA reports that an employee noticed on July 14 that four boxes that were being prepared for shipment to the Records Center and Vault located in Neosho, Missouri, were missing. According to the employee, the boxes were kept behind keypad locked doors; however some of the boxes were moved into the morgue hallway from the locked room without her knowledge. A search for the missing boxes did not uncover them.
Each sheet of paper in the boxes is on a separate veteran. There were a total of 3,637 veterans involved.
Because there were no security cameras in the area, the VA had no ready suspects. Engineering was doing work in the area and the doors were unlocked when it was determined that the four boxes were missing. The report did not specify exactly what types of personal or medical information were in the records.
Credit protection services were offered to 2,179 veterans involved in this incident. A next of kin (NOK) notification letter was sent to 1,458 deceased veterans’ next of kin.