Law firm Prokauer Rose has notified the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office that its client, Developers Diversified Realty Corporation, became aware of a “potential security breach” on or about February 2nd.
According to the report (pdf), National City Bank, one of DDR’s dividend disbursing agents, mailed some 1099-DIV tax forms on January 29th. In some cases, tax forms were included in mailings to other shareholders. The tax forms contain names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and other dividend-related information. Both NCB and DDR attempted to determine which mailings had been misdelivered, while NCB sent a second mailing to all shareholders with copies of their tax forms.
Letters to all shareholders who were originally sent tax forms on January 29 were going out today from NCB. The notification letter tells shareholders that if they received their tax form shortly after January 29, they were not affected, but if they only received the duplicate notice with cover letter sent on Feb. 6, their data was likely among the misdelivered batch.
The total number of affected individuals was not reported, and NCB is offering free credit monitoring.
Last year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture had a similar mailing problem. And in February of this year, Purdue University reported a similar mailing error involving 1099 forms for contract employees.